After the traffic light session: It doesn’t get any greener

IFinally, on the third try, it works. Christian Linder can attend his appointment at the dentist on Wednesday morning. Originally, the FDP chairman had an appointment for Monday. On that day, however, he had to cancel because the negotiations in the coalition committee, which began on Sunday evening, not only lasted into the night, but until Monday. So Lindner postpones his appointment to Tuesday because he thinks that the talks with the red and green traffic light partners will be over by then. But in the course of Monday he has to report to the dentist again. Nothing will come of it again, the negotiations are entering the third day. The coalition is only complete after 31 hours on Tuesday evening. Wednesday finally: Dental care for the Federal Minister of Finance.

But Lindner not only has reason to be happy because of his teeth. Even if the negotiations on climate protection and planning acceleration took much longer than expected, he seemed in a good mood on Tuesday evening when he commented on the results in the Reichstag building with the leaders of the green and red coalition partners, Ricarda Lang and Lars Klingbeil. Lindner speaks several times of the “paradigm shift”.

One of the most important for the FDP is the agreement to change the climate protection law so that the targets for saving emissions are no longer related to individual sectors, i.e. departments, but apply across their borders. “The sectors can help each other,” says Lindner. The liberal Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing, must have been happy, because his department is not doing well in terms of achieving the goals.

It was a “pleasure” to exchange ideas “in depth,” said the Minister of Finance, summing up the talks. The Green Party chair Lang sounds completely different. These were “by no means easy negotiations”. What the FDP likes is difficult for the Greens to cope with. The whole thing looks like there is a winner next to a loser.