Despite the break in the traffic light coalition, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing wants to remain in office until the planned new election and is leaving the FDP. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) asked him whether he was prepared to continue in office under the new conditions, said the 54-year-old in Berlin. He thought about it and said yes to Scholz.
Wissing, who is also the FDP state leader in Rhineland-Palatinate, wants to join the government in the future as a non-party, as he further announced. “I don’t want to be a burden for my party.” That’s why he informed party leader Christian Lindner that he was leaving the FDP. “I do not distance myself from the basic values of my party and do not want to join another party.” This is a personal decision that does justice to his idea of responsibility. “I want to stay true to myself.”
However, Wissing will have to look for new staff. The three parliamentary FDP state secretaries in the Ministry of Transport, Daniela Kluckert, Oliver Luksic and Gero Hocker, announced their allegiance to Wissing, as they told the “Bild” newspaper, and called for quick new elections. “Our country needs a new beginning and an orderly political situation quickly. “We no longer have confidence in Volker Wissing after his lonely decision,” they told the newspaper. They therefore asked the minister to “immediately arrange for our dismissal to the Federal President”.
Wissing’s decision comes as a surprise. FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr had announced the evening before that all his party’s ministers wanted to submit their resignations to the Federal President.
The traffic light was broken on Wednesday. After a bitter dispute over direction, especially over the future course of economic and budget policy, Scholz announced that he would throw Finance Minister Lindner out of the cabinet. Voters can now prepare for early elections, probably in March.
At the beginning of November, the Transport Minister spoke out in favor of the Liberals remaining in the coalition in a guest article for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. On the same day, a Lindner paper was published in which he called for a realignment of economic policy – which further fueled the long-simmering coalition dispute.
