The German chancellor Olaf Solz has called a meeting of members of the ruling coalition this afternoon in an attempt to de-escalate the growing tension between them, which threatens to turn into a crisis.

The Liberals of the FDP, the environmentalists and the Social Democrats of Solz, who are part of the governing coalition, disagree on a number of issues, such as the climate, the financing of the army, the budget for 2024 and the following years.

The FDP, which has taken over the finance ministry, sees itself as the guarantor of fiscal austerity. Christoph Maier, its executive, yesterday Saturday criticized the other two parties of the government coalition that “they are addicted to public spending”, in an interview he granted to the newspapers of the Funke journalistic group.

“Sometimes you have to take the schnapps bottle out of an alcoholic’s mouth,” he declared.

As far as the climate is concerned, the Greens and the FDP have not hidden for weeks their disagreements regarding cars with internal combustion engines and the gradual ban on the use of natural gas and cylinders for heating.

Soltz, a year and a half after being in power, is trying to reconcile the members of the governing coalition.

“The house of the coalition is burning,” wrote the German newspaper Bild.

Obstacles

The aim of today’s meeting, which starts at 18:30 (local time), is to restore order to the governing coalition, in order to stop the decline in its popularity, which benefits the Christian Democrats (CDU) – who appear first in the opinion polls – and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the third largest party according to several surveys.

The Minister of Economy and Climate has caused the biggest upheavals in recent days Robert Hambeck, which belongs to the Greens. After being criticized for prioritizing renewable energy sources, Habeck went on the counterattack.

“It is not possible in a progressive coalition for a single party to represent progress and the others to block it,” he complained on Tuesday.

Hambeck accuses the government of “not fulfilling enough” its mission “to offer something to the people, to Germany” and to the climate.

The country met its 2022 target to limit carbon dioxide emissions, partly due to the energy crisis, but has a long way to go before achieving carbon neutrality in 2045.

The minister mainly criticizes the FDP for blocking his plan, leaked to the press, to ban new gas or cylinder heating installations from next year.

This would have “disastrous” economic and social consequences, says Christian Lindner, head of the FDP and Germany’s finance minister.

His opinion is shared by the SPD, with MP Dirk Wiese stating that he is worried about all those who “cannot spend 20,000 to 30,000 euros for a new heating installation”.

Putin

FDP voters, who come mainly from the upper social classes, worry that “the state will force” them to change habits and lifestyles, political scientist Gero Neugebauer commented.

According to him, “the changes in behavior” requested by the Greens “are considered (by some Germans) as unacceptable interference in their private lives”, while he estimated that the communication policy of the government “for the challenges that poses climate change was not complete.”

The tension is such that FDP vice president Wolfgang Kubicki went so far as to say—before apologizing for his comment—that Habeck believes, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, “that the state, the leader, the parliamentarian knows better than the citizens what is good for them”.

The SPD asked the members of the governing coalition not to present their disagreements to the press and to “move to another working model”, according to party co-chairman Lars Klingbeil.

For its part, the CDU, which dreams of returning to power in 2025, has not stopped criticizing Solz. “A leading figure is needed more than ever, and Olaf Solz doesn’t seem to be one because he’s letting things slide,” CDU vice-president Carsten Linnemann complained.