“The FDP deserves respect”

The FDP’s decision to let talks for a ‘Jamaica coalition’ government collapse after four weeks spared Germany a “government rife with contradictions”, Heike Göbel writes in a commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “No labour market flexibility, no reform of the Renewable Energy Act, no limit lines for the euro” – if this has been the last offer by the pro-business FDP’s potential coalition partners, the environmentalist Green Party and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance, “then the Free Democrats merit gratitude for not letting the yellow-green-black [the parties’ colours] experiment take over power”, Göbel says. A compromise, however shaky, “must not be the measure of all things”, she argues. According to Göbel, the FDP was the only party “to touch a taboo” by calling Germany’s 2020 climate targets into question, which had been based on  divergent assumptions. “With a Jamaica coalition, the energy transition would have become more expensive and more painful for some industries, rather than geared towards free market forces," she argues.

Read the commentary in German here.

See the CLEW article German coalition talks collapse despite progress on climate and energy for background.