The FDP politician Kubicki sends a peppery Christmas message to the traffic lights: The citizens now have the feeling that Germany is on the way to a “dysfunctional state”. He calls Habeck’s gas procurement bigoted, Lambrecht is overwhelmed with the Bundeswehr reform.
The FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki has again criticized the work of his own traffic light coalition with drastic words. The traffic light, which includes the SPD and the Greens as well as Kubicki’s FDP, was chosen to increase the prosperity of the country and its citizens – “not to endanger it,” Kubicki told the “Bild” newspaper. Many people have the impression that Germany is on the way to becoming a “dysfunctional state”. The areas of infrastructure, administration, energy prices and the inability of the Bundeswehr to defend the country are affected – “we have to take countermeasures now, otherwise it will go wrong,” said Kubicki, who is also Bundestag Vice President.
Above all, Kubicki sharply attacked the policy of the Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck. He called it bigoted to buy liquid gas from Qatar, the Emirates and the USA for “very, very much money” and at the same time to refuse to mine cheaper shale gas from Germany – “for purely ideological reasons”. From his point of view, the nuclear power plants should also continue to be operated.
The Social Democratic Minister of Defense Christine Lambrecht also attacked Kubicki. The Bundeswehr is currently not in a position to defend the country. Minister Lambrecht “obviously had difficulties getting the billions made available by the chancellor, finance minister and parliament onto the streets.” A special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr was set up after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began.
Such drastic criticism from within the ranks is unusual for the coalition governments that are usual in Germany. As a rule, their representatives emphasize their own successes. However, Kubicki made an exception for Chancellor Olaf Scholz: in the newspaper he praised the SPD politician’s “level-headed attitude” in relation to Russia and Ukraine.
However, not all FDP politicians see it that way. In the dispute over German tank deliveries to the Ukraine, the liberal defense politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, together with the Green party Anton Hofreiter, called for the chancellor to change course. In a joint article for ntv.de, they wrote that Ukraine not only needs more anti-aircraft defenses, but above all armored vehicles. Specifically, it is about troop carriers, armored personnel carriers and battle tanks. The ring exchange no longer helps, since the European states have now handed over almost all Soviet-design infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks to the Ukraine. Also, they’re running out of ammo.
