A gloomy financial scenario is overshadowing the coalition negotiations that have just started in Brandenburg. The SPD and CDU want to form a red-black alliance there after the coalition between the SPD and Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which was barely more than a year old, collapsed at the beginning of January. According to the current Finance Minister Robert Crumbach, there will not only be no room for additional projects from both parties. “It will not work without savings and sometimes painful cuts,” he predicted in a ministry statement with a view to the state budgets for the next two years.
He sees a gap of more than 3 billion euros for 2027 and 2028. This would mean that Brandenburg’s deficit would be on a similar scale as Berlin, even though the state has a third fewer inhabitants. These more than 3 billion can be reduced to 1.6 to 1.8 billion through loans and reduced spending. But how this can be managed is still an open question.
This significantly limits the desire for the coalition agreement between the designated partners SPD and CDU, who are negotiating under the leadership of their state chairmen Dietmar Woidke (SPD), who is also Prime Minister, and Jan Redmann (CDU). Concrete results are not yet known. “Bringing stability, reliability and calm to state politics,” said SPD General Secretary Kurt Fischer on Tuesday as the primary goal.
The SPD and CDU will still govern together in 2024
In principle, there should be more cooperation between the SPD and CDU, which have already governed together several times and most recently from 2019 to 2024, then in a Kenya coalition with the Greens, than in previous alliances. Apparently following the Cologne motto “I can do it myself,” the SPD and CDU want to grant each other successes.
It remains to be seen whether Finance Minister Crumbach, who has just issued such a warning, will also be a member of the future state government. He left the SPD in 2024 after 41 years and led the BSW into a coalition with the SPD after the state elections. After intensifying internal party quarrels Crumbach, who also has a mandate in the state parliament, left the BSW at the beginning of January and joined the SPD parliamentary group as a non-party.
Crumbach has worked well with Woidke since the government was formed. There were also no critical tones to be heard from the SPD parliamentary group towards the then BSW politician. If Crumbach remained minister, another SPD cabinet member would have to resign because the CDU will presumably claim three ministerial posts, like the BSW before it. The SPD currently has seven cabinet members and the Prime Minister.
The change in coalition is likely to mean a big change for the mood in the state parliament. While the previously oppositional CDU behaved largely constructively, a red-black alliance is likely to face concentrated populism from the AfD and BSW factions, from which more AfD-critical MPs have left.
A clear majority wants new elections
Both AfD and BSW interpret the formation of an SPD-CDU coalition as voter fraud because the election results of September 2024 did not result in a majority for the SPD and CDU, which has now been made possible by the BSW’s faction change. Im taz-Interview The state chairman of the Greens, who have been extra-parliamentary since 2024, Clemens Rostock, also emphasized, “that both of them are at the State election “didn’t get a majority.”
According to a recent survey commissioned by… Nordkuriers More than two thirds of those eligible to vote in Brandenburg want new elections after the end of the SPD-BSW coalition. In the same survey, the SPD and CDU together only get 38 percent. The Left Party and the Greens achieved 8 and 5 percent and would therefore not fail at the 5 percent hurdle as in 2024, but would return to the state parliament.