Hello and welcome to the Euro-Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, Susanne Monsenk and Jack Smith.

Today, we will naturally want to talk about the German cabinet formation, which was agreed yesterday.

The so-called Traffic Light Coalition agreed its coalition treaty.

It went to over 170 pages and we're not going to read them to you,

but we would like to discuss what are the important things that they agreed. Now, I'm just going to ask, there's so many facets we can talk about. I was going to ask you, what do you think

are the issues that non-Germans would focus on or the questions

that non-Germans would have about this new coalition?

I mean, I can only say from France, there is definitely a sort of a nervous look at what

Christian Lindner will do in the finance ministry.

And now they are actually up for the EU presidency and want to reform the Stability Pact.

That is sort of a dear to the heart.

So Lizzie Koe had a big story this morning about all the personal attributes.

We learned all about him owning a Porsche very early on being the first one in parliament and his ability

to walk away from things if it's not in line with the values of the FTP.

Now, the French are really puzzled what that actually means and how this could manifest

in a fiscal policy and also in a way of cooperating with them on the reform

of the Stability and Growth Pact.

We saw already that Lindner changed a little bit the language in the Zü-Dutcherteng.

I think he talked about that it is of crucial importance Europe and the cooperation in Europe

has its own importance.

So that's a slight change in tact and sound and tone from what we heard from him as an opposition leader.

But still, the question is, what will Lindner do as a finance minister?

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