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Christian Lindner, the German liberal leader seen as the country’s likely next finance minister, has faced a barrage of criticism in recent days from prominent economists who warn that his hawkish fiscal views represent a mortal threat to the euro.
But an examination of Lindner’s CV (a fraught exercise in German politics) raises a different — if no less alarming — question: Is he even qualified for the job?
Lindner leads the Free Democrats (FDP), the smallest of the three parties currently in talks to form a new German government. Even before September’s general election, Lindner signaled that he wanted the finance ministry. His party declined to comment on his ambitions for the post.
The attraction is obvious.
After the chancellor, the finance minister is the most powerful figure in German politics, overseeing a budget that surged to almost €500 billion for the current year as the country tackled the coronavirus crisis.
On the international stage, the German finance minister has traditionally been a force to be reckoned with, whether he was called Olaf Scholz, Wolfgang Schäuble or Peer Steinbrück. (No woman has ever held the post.)
It’s no accident that the roster of former German finance ministers reads like a Who’s Who of the leading lights of Germany’s postwar politics. Nearly all of them, including former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, have had substantial executive experience, either as ministers, state premiers or mayors, prior to ascending to the post.
And then there’s Lindner.
Lindner, who was so young when he began his political career in the FDP that older colleagues called him "Bambi," is without question one of Germany’s standout political talents. Yet beyond the title of his university master’s thesis — "Tax competition and fiscal equalization. Can the financial constitution be reformed?" — it’s not clear what would qualify him to be finance minister.
Lindner, who studied political science and sells himself as a champion for entrepreneurs, has spent nearly his entire career working as a local politician, MP or party functionary. He’s never been a mayor, a state premier, a minister or even a deputy minister.
His greatest accomplishment would appear to be marketing his party and himself. In 2017, Lindner, who became FDP leader several years earlier after the party failed to win enough votes to get into parliament, led the liberals from the brink of oblivion back into the Bundestag.
The turnaround gave him near-total authority over the party, which for all intents and purposes became a one-man show. Furthering that impression was Lindner’s omnipresence on Germany’s evening talk-show circuit, where he became the go-to man for a free-market critique of Angela Merkel’s government, the Greens and everything in between.
The media appearances enabled Lindner — who as a young consultant liked to flash his success behind the wheel of a black Porsche — to build a lucrative sideline as a public speaker.
In addition to his MP salary, he received more than €470,000 during the last parliamentary term for activities such as giving speeches to banks, insurers and other groups, according to abgeordnetenwatch.de, a German transparency watchdog.
Though communication is a useful skill for a finance minister, other qualities are arguably more important — like balancing the books.
By that score, Lindner, who has vowed to reactivate Germany’s “debt brake” (i.e. a rule that means no budget deficits) and demand stricter fiscal discipline in the eurozone, has a mixed record.
By his own telling, his first company, a PR consulting firm, was a huge success. The same can’t be said for his second venture, Moomax, which he co-founded in 2000.
A software firm seeking to tap into the then-booming dot.com scene, it received nearly €2 million in funding from a government-sponsored venture fund. Lindner ran the firm for about a year before resigning. Moomax, like many start-ups at the time, went under before it really even got off the ground.
Like any smart politician trying to paper over failures, Lindner has sought to cast the episode as a valuable learning experience.
That hasn’t always been easy, in large part because for Lindner, it remains a sensitive subject.