Federal President Steinmeier is intensifying discussions on the coalition's situation

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's job description includes maintaining contact with the heads of the government and the parties. Since the beginning of his term in office in 2017, he has also met regularly with the respective Chancellor. But Steinmeier apparently now considers the state of the coalition between the Union and the SPD to be so worrying that he has recently intensified his discussions, for example with the Social Democratic Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU). The Federal President's Office did not want to comment publicly on this. But a corresponding report from the magazine “Spiegel” about such phone calls was published by the F.A.Z. basically confirmed from two sources.

According to F.A.Z. information, Steinmeier also spoke to other cabinet members. At the beginning of the week, the President met Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) at the celebration of the 75th birthday of the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. However, government circles say that it was only a conversation that lasted a few minutes on the way into the hall - not a fundamental exchange about the state of the federal government.

The background to Steinmeier's activity is the tense atmosphere in the coalition. This is how it is perceived and presented on both the Union and SPD sides. People often talk badly about each other, right up to the top, and mutual suspicions are not uncommon.

The fact that, for various reasons, the leading SPD ministers are currently rarely at the table when the really important things are being negotiated does not contribute to the quality of the coalition climate. Bärbel Bas, the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, has been unable to attend for two weeks due to a bereavement in her area. She probably won't take part in next week's coalition committee either. Her ministry says that the upcoming draft laws on pensions and working hours are still being worked on under high pressure. But the minister is missing for the final agreements.

There is an increasing desire in the Union to finally get the draft law for the planned pension reform from Bas. It is pointed out that the political agreement on the pension was made three months ago, but nothing has been presented to Bas yet.

Klingbeil was also not in Berlin at the beginning of the week when the decisive rounds on nursing care reform took place. On Monday he discussed with citizens in Heidelberg and on Tuesday in Wiesbaden. The SPD says that he was able to join the negotiations in Berlin digitally at any time. On the Union side, however, this was perceived as a lack of seriousness. The F.A.Z. It was presented in such a way that Health Minister Carsten Linnemann, Chancellery Minister Nina Warken (both CDU) and Dobrindt were present at the discussions about the nursing care reform on the Union side. Klingbeil's State Secretary Björn Böhning negotiated on behalf of the SPD.

The Social Democrat Steinmeier, whose party membership is, as usual, suspended during his time as Federal President, has spent most of his long political career in operational business. He was head of the Chancellery under his party colleague Gerhard Schröder, later foreign minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and chairman of the SPD parliamentary group.

As president, Steinmeier never lost interest in the operational side of politics and always kept a close eye on the respective coalitions. When it was not possible to form a so-called Jamaica coalition made up of the CDU, the Greens and the FDP after the 2017 federal election, Steinmeier worked to ensure that the SPD, contrary to a widespread wish in the party, entered into an alliance with the Union for a third time.

There are situations in which the Federal President must act formally. So it was up to him to dissolve the Bundestag and pave the way for an early election after the then Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) asked for a vote of confidence in 2024 and, as expected, lost. Steinmeier's efforts to have a stabilizing effect on the coalition may also be due to the fact that if it fails prematurely, he would have to decide again whether there will be an early federal election.

The election of the next Federal President will take place at the end of January, and the handover of office will take place shortly afterwards. It would be a cold start for a new head of state to have to make a decision of such consequence straight away.