The CSU no longer governs in Berlin and is now looking for its new role – Bavaria
Alexander Dobrindt didn’t even bother with congratulations. He had “considerable doubts about the direction” of the coalition agreement, said the CSU regional group leader in Berlin. A little later, the CSU General Secretary spoke in Munich. He sees “real lines of conflict,” said Markus Blume. The coalition agreement breathes “little Bavarian air”.
Direction. Lines of conflict. Bavarian air. These are the buzzwords that the CSU has put together for the day on which the SPD, Greens and FDP would present their coalition agreement. Olaf Scholz (SPD) spoke of the “government in the middle”, Dobrindt placed the traffic light exactly where the CSU would like to see it for strategic reasons: to the left. The contract, said Dobrindt, was “the birth of a left-wing yellow coalition”.
Is the CSU also sliding to the right in order to distance itself from the traffic light as much as possible? On Wednesday Dobrindt and Blume picked out two points in particular to illustrate the new contrast between Munich and Berlin: migration and cannabis. He feared “pull effects” in migration and worried about a cannabis release, “what that will do with our young society,” said Dobrindt. When it comes to smoking weed, there may be supporters in the CSU party youth, the party majority is against the release.
And when it comes to migration, the CSU is no longer under the constraints of the federal government and could sharply criticize self-determined migration movements below its own upper limit. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann recently announced that he would closely follow the traffic light plans, such as possible access for asylum seekers to full social benefits already on arrival. Herrmann will soon take over the chairmanship of the conference of interior ministers.
The traffic lights offer attack surfaces by themselves
Opposition, after 16 years, that is now practically fixed for the CSU, which sees itself as a natural ruling party not only in Bavaria. And yet, the CSU sees itself in a comfortable situation with a view to the traffic lights and state elections in 2023. The theory of the party leaders, which can be heard from the CSU headquarters: If the federal government moves to the left, the CSU does not have to slide to the right to create a contrast. “Just stand where we are with our position,” say strategic voices in the party.
The traffic lights then offer attack surfaces almost by themselves. The reactions to the coalition agreement are also a clue that the first comments on the traffic light sound a bit like the continuation of the CSU motto in the federal election campaign: “Prevent left slide”. A motto that was originally aimed at a red-green-red government. The question is: does this message still work, despite the FDP?
The leitmotif should be what CSU boss Markus Söder outlined: the image of the “traffic light north” and the “free south”. In fact, Bavaria is the only state government in which no Ampel partner is involved. From the “Bavarian counterweight” General Blume, who speaks as a terrible scenario for the Free State and its citizens that the CSU will no longer co-govern in Berlin.
The state associations of the Greens, SPD and FDP, however, interpret the traffic light as a push for Bavaria. “A real progress alliance that will also make Bavaria a whole lot fairer, more modern and more sustainable,” said the SPD regional leaders Ronja Endres and Florian von Brunn. Markus Blume, on the other hand, announces that the CSU will now set “the necessary accents” in the federal government “from Bavaria. And that would make the ministers of the CSU “even more important” in the state government – because they “also have to formulate an alternative to Berlin”.
“Typically green prohibition idea”
Almost over-motivated, half the CSU cabinet jumped at the traffic light contract. Finance Minister Albert Füracker criticized the plans to introduce a sugar tax. With this, “the traffic light wants to introduce another tax at the expense of all consumers”. The FDP breaks its “full-bodied declarations”, a “typically green concept of prohibition”.
Health Minister Klaus Holetschek has announced that he will not implement a documentation requirement of the Traffic Light Infection Protection Act for medical and nursing facilities for the time being: “Bureaucracy and pandemic do not get along,” he said. Digital Minister Judith Gerlach announced that the renunciation of a digital ministry in the federal government was “the first traffic light failure” and “digital political discouragement”. European Minister Melanie Huml, doctor and ex-head of the health department, tweeted that cannabis was “not a harmless plant” and that the legalization plan was “a policy of social irresponsibility”.
After all, the CSU general was able to wrest a little friendliness. “I wish the traffic light government all the best for their work,” said Blume. You had to imagine the friendly facial expression.