Coming after sixteen years of Christian-Democratic rule, Germany’s fall 2021 general election appeared to mark a turnaround. The Social Democrats (SPD) edged into first place (25.7 percent) and leader Olaf Scholz promised a new government that would act on poverty reduction and decarbonization. He formed a coalition with the left-liberal Greens (14.8 percent) and the neoliberal-hawkish Free Democratic Party (FDP; 10.7 percent) — what the German press refers to as a Traffic Light agreement, in reference to the parties’ green, yellow, and red colors. This was effectively the only way to secure a parliamentary majority without the Christian Democrats. Yet it posed an obvious problem: the FDP is a party of fervent pro-capitalists and market fundamentalists whose whole raison d’être is to champion business interests, lower taxes for the wealthy, and oppose state spending.

If many imagined the government would take up a “progressive” mantle, such hopes were further dampened when Christian Lindner, the leader of the FDP, was named finance minister, giving his party tight control over public spending.

In office, Lindner has surely delivered — for his most dogmatically neoliberal supporters, at least. He recently made headlines by putting forward a budget for 2024 with €20 billion worth of spending cuts, made mainly to various welfare programs. Yet Lindner’s commitment to austerity transcends his own country’s borders, as his opposition to the European Commission’s recent investment-friendly shift on EU fiscal policy illustrates. In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, a rising far right has fed off voters’ anger at declining standards of living. If enacted, Lindner’s vision can only help such forces, while spelling economic doom for many Germans.