While the three parties in Olaf Scholz’s government are already having great difficulty agreeing on their draft budget for 2025, a new point of contention is dividing the Chancellor’s coalition even more. Under the title “A policy for the car”, the Free Democrats presented a series of measures on Monday, August 12, which were met with horror by their Social Democratic and Green partners.
The most important issue concerns short-term parking in city centers. The FDP (center-right) would prefer to see it free of charge, but proposes the introduction of a nationwide season ticket, similar to the train ticket, which allows unlimited travel throughout Germany for 49 euros a month.
To make life easier for drivers, the FDP also proposes making it more difficult to build cycle paths and pedestrian zones. Municipalities should be required to talk more closely with residents and businesses before making such decisions.
“We do not want an anti-car policy based on more and more bans,” said FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai when presenting the plan, which also promises an end to the “European Union’s projects against diesel vehicles” and aims to make Germany “more attractive” for those who want to develop motorsport in general and Formula 1 in particular. “In the area of transport, we want to relax the restrictions for drivers and oppose the Greens’ trust policy,” said Djir-Sarai.
“Populist mode”
Unsurprisingly, the Greens rejected the proposals of their coalition partners. “It makes no sense to pit cars against pedestrians,” said the vice president of the Green parliamentary group, Andreas Audretsch. “To believe that an increase in the number of cars will boost economic activity in inner cities is a dangerous mistake,” said Hanover’s Green mayor Belit Onay.
The reaction was also icy in Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD, centre-left). “The FDP is exploiting the car issue in a populist way in the run-up to the upcoming state elections (which are to take place in September in three eastern German states). The way in which it is playing off the different modes of transport against each other is a throwback to a vision of the 1970s,” said SPD transport expert Detlef Müller, member of the Bundestag.
The FDP, which is traditionally weak in the east of the country, is already not represented in the state parliaments of Saxony and Brandenburg and could also be pushed out of the Thuringian state parliament this time. In this region, where it currently has four representatives, the Liberals are only credited with two to three percent of the vote. This puts them far short of the five percent required for representation in the state parliament.
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