Germany's 'traffic light coalition' looses public trust amid budget crisis

The Green Party's popularity with voters has fallen to its lowest in over five years, a poll showed, as Germany's coalition government grapples with a big hole in its budget.

A weekly poll conducted by the INSA Institute for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed on Sunday that 73 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the federal government.

The so-called traffic light coalition - named to reflect the three party colours - is scrambling to plug a $65 billion (€60 billion) budget gap after a court blocked the transfer of unused funds from the pandemic towards green initiatives and industry support.

The Greens, which include Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, are down one percentage point compared with the previous week, scoring 12 percent in the survey, which asks voters how they would vote in a snap election.

The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Free Democrats (FDP) both remained stable at 16 percent and 6 percent respectively.

Plummeting support

"The coalition falls to 34 percent, 18 percentage points less than in the 2021 federal election," said INSA's head Hermann Binkert. "At the moment it does not look like the SPD or the Greens will be able to lead the government after the 2025 general election."

The conservative opposition CDU/CSU remains the strongest scorer with an unchanged 30 percent, while the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained one percentage point reaching 22 percent.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday promised to finalise the 2024 budget by the end of this year, seeking to reassure citizens and investors that Europe's largest economy would not be derailed by the court ruling.