The outgoing Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Katja Hessel (FDP), after the dismissal of Christian Lindner and the resulting Break of the traffic light coalition Serious allegations were made against Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). “It is a blatant lie that Lindner and the FDP should be the ones who have hindered all of the traffic light’s important projects,” said Hessel platforms of the SV group, which includes Nordkurier, Schwäbische and SVZ, on Thursday. Several laws from her department alone are currently being blocked by the Greens.

Scholz put a pistol on Lindner’s chest

Rather, the chancellor’s attempt at blackmail was responsible for the traffic light shutdown: Scholz “put the gun on Lindner’s chest” and asked him to choose between the debt brake and his job, said Hessel.

When Lindner continued to refuse to give the green light for an “unconstitutional budget,” Scholz staged the finance minister’s dismissal in order to blame him for the coalition breakup. “It was prepared down to the smallest detail, as you can see in the Chancellor’s speech,” said Hessel. You don’t write a speech like this in 15 minutes; it has been sitting in the drawer for a long time.

Scholz pushed for the debt brake to be suspended

The escalation on Wednesday evening was preceded by a dispute over a paper that Christian Lindner presented last week. In this, the former finance minister called for a sometimes complete reorientation of the traffic light policy. In order to get the economy going again, taxes should be reduced and social spending saved, and Lindner also suggested a change of course in climate policy. There was great resistance to this from the SPD and the Greens.

“The FDP has presented proposals to get the country and the economy back on track without suspending the debt brake anchored in the Basic Law,” said Hessel. But Scholz didn’t want to know anything about it. Instead, he pushed for the debt brake to be suspended. “When we realized that there would be no compromise here, we offered to carry on first and then go to new elections in an orderly manner,” said Hessel. But Scholz also rejected that. Shortly afterwards he called for a press conference at which he announced Lindner’s dismissal.