Latest news with #FreeDemocraticParty
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nicole Büttner elected new secretary general of Germany's FDP
Entrepreneur Nicole Büttner was elected as the new secretary general of Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) on Saturday, receiving 80% of the votes cast at a party conference in Berlin. Büttner has been a member of the FDP for 20 years but this is her first political role on a national level. She is managing director of the Berlin-based AI company Merantix Momentum and is also a member of the board of the German Startups Association. The new party chairman, Christian Dürr, nominated Büttner for the position. She replaces former justice minister Marco Buschmann, who withdrew from politics after the FDP failed to re-enter the Bundestag in February's elections, gaining just 4.3% of the vote. Dürr, in turn, succeeds former German finance minister Christian Lindner, who decided to quit politics following the party's major electoral defeat.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former minister Lindner takes parting shot at new German government
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 is stepping 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, where his successor is due to be elected, 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, triggering the early election. Christian Dürr, the party's former parliamentary leader, is due to replace Lindner as FDP chairman in a vote later on Friday.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Germany's FDP meets for leadership shake-up after election defeat
Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP) is set to meet on Friday to appoint its new leadership, months after its catastrophic result in February's parliamentary election. The current chairman, Christian Lindner, who served as Germany's finance minister in former chancellor Olaf Scholz's government, is stepping down after more than 11 years at the helm. His successor is likely to be the party's former parliamentary leader Christian Dürr. Dürr has proposed entrepreneur, Nicole Büttner, as the new secretary general. She has been an FDP member for 20 years but has not yet stood in the national political spotlight. The FDP's current deputy leader, Wolfgang Kubicki, is set to stand for 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 are running for the two other deputy positions. 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, Germany's lower house of parliament. 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 it joined the government in a coalition with Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
German top court rejects challenge to reunification tax
Germany's Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected an attempt by six politicians from the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) to abolish an additional tax originally introduced to finance the costs of German reunification. The court ruled that the government still has legitimate financial needs related to reunification but emphasized that the so-called solidarity surcharge cannot be permanent. If the need disappears, the tax could become unconstitutional, the judges said. A ruling against the surcharge could have left a €12.75 billion ($13.8 billion) gap in this year's federal budget and potentially forced the government to repay around €65 billion collected since 2020. The FDP challengers argued that the surcharge lost its legal basis after Solidarity Pact II, which provided for special funding aimed at narrowing the economic gap between the formerly communist East and West Germany, ended in 2019. They also claimed the tax unfairly targets high earners while most taxpayers no longer pay it. Since 2021, only top earners, companies and investors have been required to pay the 5.5% surcharge on income, corporate, and capital gains taxes. About 6 million individuals and 600,000 companies are still subject to it, according to the German Economic Institute. However, the court found no violation of the principle of equality. The German government defended the tax in court during a hearing in November, arguing that reunification costs continue and that a surcharge does not have to be tied to a single, specific expense.
Russia Today
25-02-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
German pro-business party leader retires after electoral defeat
Christian Lindner, the leader of Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party, has announced that he is retiring from politics following a disastrous defeat in Sunday's Bundestag elections. Lindner served as finance minister in the 'traffic light' ruling coalition between his party, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats and the Greens, which collapsed last year after the FDP leader pulled his support from the government due to a dispute over the budget. 'The federal election brought a defeat for the FDP, but hopefully a new beginning for Germany. That was what I had fought for,' Lindner wrote on social media. 'Now I am retiring from active politics,' he added. As of 00:35 am local time on Monday, projections reported by the German media suggest that Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) has received 28.5% of the votes, while the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is projected to receive 20.7%. The FDP is projected to receive just 4.4%, under the 5% threshold required for them to obtain seats in the legislature. Scholz conceded defeat in a speech on Sunday night. 'This is a bitter election result for the Social Democratic Party. It is also an electoral defeat,' he said in his first statement after preliminary results were released. The campaign was dominated by calls to crack down on illegal immigration and extremism in the wake of a string of terrorist attacks. The parties also spoke about the need to reimagine Germany's role in world affairs in response to US President Donald Trump's push to resolve the Ukraine conflict without the EU's approval.
