Germany's ruling coalition grapples with fresh tensions

The leak of a document from Germany's hawkish finance minister demanding immediate economic reforms has threatened to further inflame tensions in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's mutinous coalition government.

With the clock ticking down on parliamentary elections in September 2025, the three ideologically disparate parties have openly traded barbs as they enter campaign mode.

Leaked to the press on Friday, the 18-page document by Christian Lindner of the free-marketeer Free Democrats (FDP) urges measures to jumpstart Germany's stuttering economy at odds with its coalition partners the Greens and Social Democratic Party.

In particular, Lindner called for Germany to abandon climate targets more ambitious than those set by the European Union, as well as the scrapping of a number of reforms including the introduction of two weeks' paternity leave.

The Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine newspapers deemed the leaked plan a "provocation", while SDP lawmaker Nils Schmid, an ally of Olaf Scholz, called it a tract of "neoliberal rhetoric... incompatible with the coalition contract".

The tensions within the coalition, in power since late 2021, has weakened Scholz and seen all three parties dive in the polls as formerly fringe far-right and hard-left parties have made gains.

Scholz's Social Democrats do not want to back down on social issues, while Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck's Greens are trying to salvage their environmental agenda.

Lindner -- who has been the most outspokenly critical -- has pointedly told his two more free-spending coalition partners that "new spending requests cannot be met" and warned of tough budget choices ahead in an "autumn of decisions".

Tensions could peak this month when the three governing partners must agree to pass a state budget for 2025, after similar talks nearly collapsed the coalition in July.