Former German minister Lindner bids farewell as FDP picks new leader
Former German finance minister Christian Lindner bid farewell to his Free Democratic Party (FDP) on Friday with heavy criticism of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's new government.
Lindner stepped down as chairman of the FDP after leading the pro-business party to a disastrous result in February's national election, leaving it without a seat in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.
At a party conference in the German capital, Lindner said the "majority of voters voted for less state and more freedom. What is now being delivered is more state and more debt."
"If the Merz government does not flank this new fiscal policy with reforms, then this decision on direction will first come back like a boomerang in economic terms and then at the ballot box in 2029," he added.
The former finance minister took a parting shot at Merz's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in his speech, saying: "I find it difficult to make quick changes to my basic political convictions. There are many in the CDU who have more talent for this than we do."
Lindner was fired as finance minister in November, leading the FDP to withdraw from former chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition, which triggered the early election.
FDP appoints new chairman
Christian Dürr, the party's former parliamentary leader, was chosen to replace Lindner as FDP chairman on Friday evening, receiving 82% of the vote.
The FDP's current deputy leader, Wolfgang Kubicki, won re-election before the party's 600 delegates.
Henning Höne, FDP leader in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and European lawmaker Svenja Hahn were selected to fill the two other deputy positions.
Other appointments, including of a new secretary general, were postponed until Saturday because of time constraints.
Dürr has proposed entrepreneur, Nicole Büttner, for the position of secretary general. She has been an FDP member for 20 years but has not yet stood in the national political spotlight.
Before his election, Dürr said he wanted to have a new policy programme drawn up and to reform the party's structures and processes.
"I want us to be the most modern party in Germany in terms of content," he said. "But I also want us to become the most modern party in the Federal Republic of Germany in terms of organization."
The new programme should not be limited to fundamental principles, he said, but should translate liberal goals and convictions into the concrete reality of people's lives.
Election catastrophe
The FDP won just 4.3% of the vote in February's election, falling short of the 5% threshold typically required to enter the Bundestag.
The party previously failed to reach 5% in 2013, leaving it on the margins of politics until 2017, when Lindner led it back into the Bundestag.
In 2021, the party joined the government in an unhappy coalition with Scholz's Social Democrats and the Greens, which eventually broke up late last year amid a breakdown in trust and wide differences over budgetary policy.
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