The CSU plans to establish a new style of government alongside a content-based realignment in the event of a successful election in the German federal election on February 23. According to a report by “Welt am Sonntag”, the CSU plans to replace fixed coalition agreements, which will be worked through over the legislative period, with flexible arrangements. The coalition committee is expected to become the “control center” of a future federal government.
“We want to replace the static of the rigid coalition framework with the flexibility of a dynamic coalition agreement” says a position paper of the CSU’s parliamentary group, which will be adopted at their winter retreat in the Kloster Seeon, Upper Bavaria, in the coming week. “For Germany’s political change, we need a new culture of governing” said CSU parliamentary group leader Alexander Dobrindt to “Welt am Sonntag”.
“We will fundamentally reorganize the processes of coalition work in the new legislative period to achieve efficiency, unity, and success” the group leader emphasized. The goal is “a government with a functioning guarantee, not a traffic light with a malfunction.”
The CSU draws the lesson from the failure of the grand coalition that detailed coalition agreements are “too rigid to be able to react dynamically to societal, economic, or security policy changes during the legislative period.” The core of government work will thus initially be a quick-start program that includes central measures to be implemented in the first half year after the government takes office.
“If the quick-start program is implemented, we will then discuss further tasks and priorities in the coalition” the CSU position paper states. If the implementation does not work as planned, the plans will, according to the plan, “automatically be referred to the coalition committee, which clarifies open questions, keeps the process going, resolves blockages, or achieves result agreements.