Hello everybody and welcome to the latest edition of the UK and a Changing Europe podcast.

I'm Jill Rutter, Senior Research Fellow here, and I'm delighted to be talking today to a very old friend, Teo Kohl.

I met Teo just before he came to do a very long stint at ZDF,

one of the big mainstream TV channels as their UK correspondent back in the 1990s.

He then went on to present the German equivalent of Newsnight, Frontal-Iron-Swancish,

BZDF's Paris correspondent, and then finally

moved back to Berlin as head of news before stepping down at the end of 2023. So he is very well-placed

to give us chapter and verse on the upcoming German elections, which are now entering the final

straits, with a big debate between the two lead contenders for Chancellor taking place last Sunday.

Teo, Herzich Wilkommon.

So let's start as to why we're having elections now.

They've come a bit early.

Why did the Ampel coalition, that so-called traffic-like coalition of the SPD, the

social democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats, the FDP, why did that collapse?

Thank you. Delighted to be with you, Jill. The superficial reason is absurdly called D-Day.

That was a secret paper written within the headquarters of the Liberal Party, the FTP,

a kind of secret strategy, how to break up the coalition.

And they are prepared for it.

Most people in Berlin sort of behind the scenes expected since some of the

coalition to break up anyway. And there had been huge difficulties accumulated over time. And

especially in the end, they couldn't agree on the budget for 24. Okay. So you say superficially,

were there really genuine differences or was the FDP always determined to collapse the coalition prematurely to put it, I suppose, in a better place to win

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