BERLIN—German Vice-Chancellor Guido Westerwelle might stir up friction in the coalition government as he tries to rally his party's support after plunging polls triggered rank-and-file calls for his resignation as chairman of the Free Democratic Party.
Mr. Westerwelle, speaking at a party conference Thursday, promised to accelerate the simplification of Germany's tax code and provide tax relief to small and mid-sized businesses.
The pledge in part resurrected the FDP's pre-election pledge to cut taxes, a promise it had to reverse in order to form a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, which favors deficit reduction over tax relief.
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The reversal on taxes helped pull down the FDP's showing in opinion polls, where the party now hovers below the critical 5% needed to gain any seat in parliament, down from nearly 15% of the vote in the 2009 general elections.
New general elections are still more than two years away. But coming into this year's string of elections in seven of Germany's 16 federal states, the last thing Merkel needs now is an open break with her junior coalition partner over taxes.
"The weakness of its coalition partner isn't pretty for the Chancellor," even if there's no immediate danger for the government, says Oskar Niedermayer, who heads a center for political sociology at Berlin's Free University.
The government may even lose its majority in the conservative and liberal mainland of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, where recent opinion polls show that a coalition led by the Green Party for the first time has a chance to win state elections in March. Conservative-led governments had held the key state for almost six decades.
Herbert Mertin, who leads the party into elections in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate state in late March, earlier this week said that Mr. Westerwelle needs to explain at the party meeting how he wants to start a new "offensive" to counter the loss of voter trust caused by the way he presents politics.
The FDP's performance in the federal government has handicapped the party in state and local politics, Mr. Mertin said. No one in his state so far has issued the wish for Mr. Westerwelle to participate in the Rhineland-Palatinate state election campaign.
"Opinion polls are not good. We need a new beginning," Mr. Mertin said, stopping short of demanding Mr. Westerwelle's resignation of party leader.
Responding to his critics Thursday, Mr. Westerwelle portrayed the FDP as key to preventing center-left successes at the state level, and later on a nationwide basis.
"We need to fight, if Germany isn't to be left over to the left," said Mr. Westerwelle, who also is Germany's foreign minister.
His warning was directed at speculation that Ms. Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats will dump its enfeebled junior government partner in favor of the resurgent Green Party. Some commentators also said Ms. Merkel might want to restore her previous coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, the pairing the governed Germany from 2005 to 2009.
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