That's how extraordinary Chancellor Scholz went it alone

The chancellor made the decision in the traffic light coalition's nuclear dispute - not in the interests of his coalition partners, but by virtue of the law that the federal government's rules of procedure and the Basic Law grant him. The three remaining nuclear power plants should be able to remain connected to the grid until mid-April at the latest.

The Greens wanted less, the FDP more, Olaf Scholz (SPD) wanted this compromise and prevailed. He relies on his policy competence as head of government. Constitutional lawyers certify the chancellor's impeccable legal action.

"The actions of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz are ideally suited as a school case for lectures on constitutional law for the application of the Chancellor's directive competence," says constitutional lawyer Ulrich Battis WELT. "Since the two coalition partners cannot agree, the chancellor was forced to rely on the authority to set guidelines. His reference to it and his actions are legally unchallengeable and also politically convincing,” said Battis.

The constitutional lawyer Christian Pestalozza says: “Legally everything seems fine to me. But political aftershocks cannot be ruled out.”

However, it is a drastic and unusual step for a Federal Chancellor to make decisions within his government with explicit reference to his authority to set guidelines. You have to go back a long way in the history of the Federal Republic to come across comparable cases - back to the time of Konrad Adenauer's (CDU) chancellorship.

With regard to the traffic light alliance, Scholz always spoke of a coalition “on an equal footing”, i.e. an alliance of equal partners. As late as August he had said with regard to the authority to set guidelines: "It's good that I have it, but of course not in the form of writing someone a letter: Please, Mr. Minister, do the following..." - like he did now.

The fact that the Chancellor claims the last word and the final decision in the event of the conflict about the final end of the nuclear power plants has to do with the fact that the Greens and the FDP could not come to an agreement and were hopelessly caught up in each other. In the end, none of the coalition partners could think of a solution other than a word of power from the chancellor. Scholz's predecessors, on the other hand, had generally refrained from making such decisions.

During her 16-year chancellorship, Angela Merkel (CDU) had repeatedly threatened to make decisions based on the authority to issue guidelines. Ultimately, she never did.

Not even when the dispute with the then Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) escalated massively in the grand coalition in the summer of 2018. Because an agreement at EU level was difficult, the interior minister wanted to single-handedly reject migrants at the German border. The irritated chancellor declared the matter to be a "question of policy competence". Seehofer's plan is a violation of this.

But Seehofer didn't take the chancellor's threat seriously at the time. Merkel did not wave with the “guideline competence. That would also be unusual between two party leaders," scoffed the CSU politician. Ultimately, Seehofer was held back by his own people, not by the chancellor.

The appearance of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) was more dramatic in coalition disputes. He pointed out to his Green coalition partners several times in clear terms that they have the right to have the last word. Particularly forcefully, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Red-Greens argued in the United States about military intervention by the West in Afghanistan.

In mid-October of the year, the chancellor explained to the skeptical Greens: "Politics are made in the federal government." He had no intention of cutting back on his authority to set guidelines. "What I said applies," stressed the Chancellor.

In the end, that was true. Without a formal letter in the style of Scholz. In any case, the authority to set guidelines only applies to the members of the federal cabinet; the members of the Bundestag are free from it. Here the chancellor, if he is looking for a test of strength, has to ask a vote of confidence – just like Schröder did, for example.

Helmut Kohl (CDU) sought other ways of resolving conflicts with the FDP than insisting on his authority to set guidelines. And his predecessor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) said at the end of his term in office from 1974 to 1982 that he had not made use of the authority to set guidelines: "In fact, I have always considered it my duty to make great efforts to bring about sensible, practically usable, two to use compromises that are equally reasonable for both parties."

Only the first Federal German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer (CDU), repeatedly insisted clearly and directly on his authority to set guidelines: in 1955 to Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano (CDU), whom he whistled back on questions of reunification. And in 1956, when he pushed through his pension reform ideas with Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard (CDU).

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