Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I am Wolfgang Munchau. We are finally back after a long summer break. This is our special German election edition. We will revert to our previous weekly rhythm starting this Friday. With me today is my new colleague, Jack Smith. Welcome on board, Jack. Thank you very much, Wolfgang. It's lovely to be here and to be

talking to everybody. Let's start with the German elections. You wrote this morning,

Advantage Lashit. How did you get to this conclusion? Yeah, I was wondering whether I should be

writing this, because we don't normally make predictions at Eurointelligence.

And this is not really meant to be a prediction.

What I was referring to is that the elections made only three coalition options of the six or even eight that some people talked about possible.

The three options are a coalition between Olaf Schultz's SPD,

the Greens, and the FTP, the Liberal Party.

That's called the Traffic Light Coalition because it's red, yellow and green.

The other coalition is a coalition between the CDU, CSU, whose leader is Armin Lashard, the FTP and the Greens. So the FTP and the Greens would be in both coalitions. Now, the latter

coalitions called Jamaica because it's black, yellow and green, and they thought that's up. So it's

Jamaica. Lashard lost the election in terms of he came second.

It was a terrible result for the CDU, the worst ever. Now, last time it was also a terrible result,

so it's not exactly new. But as so often in politics, people don't care so much about, you know, absolute shifts. I mean,

the general public isn't what it was in the 1970s or 1950s. So nobody these days gets 40% anymore,

except in systems with first past the post, like the UK or the US, where one candidate,

the winning candidate usually gets over 40%.

That's not the case anymore in the coalition of continental Europe.

So 24% is not great, but Lashett could be in a position to form a majority with the FTP and the Greens

in exactly the same way as Olaf Schultz would be in a position

to form a majority with the Greens.

The fact that Schultz is a header of Lachitt makes no difference because both of these constellations

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