Berlin Election Fiasco Makes Scholz’s Coalition Life Much Harder
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(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces more turbulence in his coalition after a bitter Berlin state election in which all three ruling parties lost support and one crashed out of the city’s parliament.
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The conservative Christian Democrats — the main opposition party at the national level — emerged as the clear winner after Sunday’s vote in the German capital. They beat Scholz’s Social Democrats by nearly 10 points, threatening to end the center-left party’s more than two decades of control of the city’s government.
After narrowly finishing ahead of the Greens, Mayor Franziska Giffey said on Monday that the SPD would seek a “meaningful role” in Berlin’s next administration, despite the party slumping to its worst-ever result in the city.
“The SPD wants to enable an agenda of change for Berlin,” Giffey said, adding that the party will hold talks with the CDU as well as its current coalition partners, the Greens and the Left.
While wrangling over control over Berlin sets up weeks of tough negotiations, one of the most damaging aspects of the vote is already clear: the Free Democrats are in a downward spiral. Scholz’s junior coalition partner at the federal level failed to win enough votes to secure a place in the Berlin state parliament, continuing a string of weak election results.
“Quite obviously, the FDP was not able to benefit from the mood of change” in the Berlin vote, said Christian Lindner, the head of the party and Scholz’s finance minister. “In our participation in government, we are pursuing a clear strategy that hasn’t paid off here in Berlin, but to which we are committed.”
The poor showing stands to increase tensions within Scholz’s coalition — dubbed the traffic light because of the parties’ colors. The pro-business FDP has frequently clashed with the Greens over energy policy and that’s starting to spill over to transport issues, with feuds over building more highways.
“It’s clear to me: as of tomorrow, the appeasement policy in the traffic-light coalition is over,” said Wolfgang Kubicki, the FDP’s deputy leader.
Scholz’s push for strong state intervention to steer Europe’s largest economy through the security and energy crises triggered by Russia’s war against Ukraine has run afoul of the FDP’s long-standing advocacy of tight fiscal spending and pro-market policies.
Lindner indicated a harder shift to the right, saying the Free Democrats would seek to strengthen the German economy through less taxes and more entrepreneurship and step up the fight against illegal immigration.
Support for the Free Democrats has slumped to around 7% in national polls from 11.5% in the September 2021 election that brought Scholz to power. Since then, the liberal party has also failed to make it into state legislatures in Lower Saxony and Saarland, while its number of seats dropped by roughly half in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia — Lindner’s home state.
After its victory, the CDU will try to form a parliamentary majority in Berlin, but Kai Wegner, its top candidate, may find partners hard to come by. The Greens and the Left have said that they prefer to continue the alliance with the SPD despite the election losses.
The process could lead to more sparring in the capital, which has been mired in a housing crisis, an overburdened administration and concerns about public safety after violent scenes on New Year’s Eve.
The election itself was indicative of the city’s disorder. Due to irregularities including missing voting slips and logistical problems during the last ballot in September 2021, Berlin’s top court ordered a repeat.
“Berliners have lost trust in politics,” Wegner said. Pushing back against a continuation of the current left-leaning alliance, he added: “The result of the Berlin election is so clear, it cannot be discussed away.”
--With assistance from Arne Delfs.
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