Germany’s first Federal three-Party Coalition: the European Dimension

Germany has witnessed the gradual fragmentation of its party system since the 1980s as a result of the growing diversity of societal interests, which became particularly noticeable in the aftermath of reunification. The formation of minimal winning governing coalitions has consequently become more complex and tended to include more than two parties on the regional Länder level. On the federal level, the new diversity has resulted in the choice between a CDU/CSU-SPD grand coalition and alternative coalitions involving three parties. While the Jamaica option failed to materialise after the 2017 federal election, the weak performance of the CDU/CSU at the most recent election in September 2021 opened the path towards the formation of the first three-party coalition on the federal level. The Traffic Light coalition between SPD, Greens and the FDP allowed the SPD to regain the office of chancellor for the first time since 2005. The governing mandate of the new chancellor Olaf Scholz is however based on a coalition with a noticeable ideological distance between the parties involved. This will make it harder to achieve consensus on fundamental policy issues and could ultimately make Germany’s European diplomacy less predictable. The paper examines the positions of the three parties in the Scholz government on the following strategic policy issues for the future of the EU: intergovernmental cooperation, economic competitiveness, employment and welfare reform under crisis conditions, institutional reform, enlargement, defence and security.