What drives the FDP: More car traffic in cities or opposition within the coalition?

Always on Mondays: The FDP Presidium meets at the start of the week - and that's why there's slight alarm in the traffic light coalition on Mondays. Because the decisions of the FDP leadership board often seem more like those of an opposition party rather than a coalition partner. The most recent example: the paper titled "Roadmap Future – A Policy for the Car" from Monday.

What was announced as a "Roadmap Future" read in parts more like a "Roadmap Past": more cars in city centers through free parking, as little conversion of streets to bike lanes and pedestrian zones as possible, and of course - a common FDP position - no general speed limit on highways. Even more cars in the already often congested city centers? Really? Even the ADAC warned of "pull effects" for cars amidst pre-existing traffic problems.

SPD sees the positions as a disgrace

The reaction from the coalition came immediately. With its positions, the FDP pits different modes of transport against each other and shows that it has returned to the transportation policy of the 1970s, according to SPD transport politician Detlef Müller. "It's a disgrace for the party that heads the Ministry of Transportation." The recent paper is the preliminary endpoint of a whole series of FDP Presidium resolutions. Sometimes it's twelve points "to accelerate the economic transformation" like in April, sometimes it's five points for a "generation-appropriate financial policy" like in May, and now ten points on transportation policy. They always have conflict potential for the traffic light coalition. And the question always arises: What drives the FDP?

General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai, who presents the results of the Presidium meeting every Monday at the Hans-Dietrich-Genscher-Haus in Berlin-Mitte, cannot understand the excitement. "Not at all," he responded after presenting the car paper to a journalist's question about how much the FDP might be deliberately risking the coalition. "I'm speaking to you here as the General Secretary of the FDP and not as the General Secretary of the traffic light coalition." Other parties also discuss the topics that are relevant to them as parties.

Is the FDP already in campaign mode? 

What, then, does the FDP aim to achieve with its defiance? Regarding the car paper, SPD transport expert Müller set the direction: "With their decision, the FDP wants nothing more than to exploit the topic populistically with an eye on the state elections." That the FDP - polling at 2 percent in Saxony and Thuringia and 3 percent in Brandenburg ahead of the September elections - can turn things around with such maneuvers seems unlikely. But: There is significant dissatisfaction within the party and its base with the traffic light course and also with the overall direction in which the country is heading. Bureaucracy and ongoing economic weakness are the keywords here.

"Many people in Germany are worried about their own economic progress. They expect Germany to play in the top global league and not be pushed to the back," said party leader and federal finance minister Christian Lindner the day after the European election. This election was a fiasco for all traffic light parties if you take the Bundestag election results as a benchmark. However, the FDP celebrated its top candidate Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who managed to win 5.2 percent of the vote in a combative street campaign - at least 2 percentage points more than the low in opinion polls.