German liberals narrowly vote to stay in Scholz’s fractious coalition

BERLIN: A slim majority of the members of Germany’s Free Democrats have voted in a non-binding membership poll to stay in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fractious three-way governing coalition.

The low-tax, business-minded party’s membership has chafed at governing with Scholz’s socially minded Social Democrats and the Greens, leading to speculation that the coalition might not last the just under two years that remain of its term.

Bijan Djir-Sarai, the FDP’s general secretary, said on Monday the result, with 52 percent voting to stay, clearly showed that the party wanted to continue to govern. Leader Christian Lindner serves as the coalition’s finance minister.

“The overwhelming majority of members with a vote want the FDP to keep taking responsibility,” he told reporters. “The political challenges are enormous, in economic policy, in budgetary policy, but also migration ... And we want the FDP to keep contributing.”

Just 26,000 of the party’s 76,000 members voted in the poll, which was launched by local and regional chiefs after the party was ejected from regional parliaments in Bavaria and Hessen after falling below the 5 percent vote share threshold in elections.

With the war in Ukraine, the loss of Russian gas and the need for an accelerated energy transition imposing unprecedented costs on Europe’s industrial powerhouse at a time of low or negative growth, the FDP is finding its fiscally orthodox recipes a hard sell.

None of the coalition parties have an interest in the early elections demanded by the opposition conservatives. In tough economic times, polls place the conservatives on over 30 percent, around twice the level of the SPD and the Greens. The FDP are hovering around the 5 percent mark nationally.