BERLIN — The battle to control Germany’s finance ministry is on.

At stake is not just who will hold the government purse strings in the EU's pre-eminent power. The next finance minister will also have a big say in how far Germany goes with plans for greater eurozone integration, championed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Even before they have reached a coalition deal, the four parties holding talks on forming the next government have already sent out a clear message: We don't have much money to spare, and we won't rack up debt.

In theory, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party are not yet even holding formal coalition talks with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens. Their discussions are labeled "exploratory." But the parties have already started wrestling over the finance ministry, which everyone views as the big prize on the table.

A senior lawmaker from the business-friendly Free Democrats said the ministry has operated as an "extended arm" of Merkel's chancellery — something the party is keen to bring to an end.

“No matter which one of the other three parties appoints the next finance minister, anything would be better than the chancellery and the finance ministry being both held by the CDU,” the FDP official said.

The Free Democrats' leader Christian Lindner staked a claim even before last month's general election for his party to take over the finance ministry.

For the last eight years, Merkel's party has controlled the nation's finances under CDU veteran Wolfgang Schäuble, who has now become the speaker of the German parliament. He has been provisionally replaced by Merkel’s longtime confidant and chief of staff Peter Altmaier until a new government takes office.

The Christian Democrats would like to hold on to the ministry in the next government. They argue that Schäuble’s achievement in bringing the country back to a balanced budget should be proof enough that the ministry has been in good hands.

But their future coalition partners fear falling into the same trap as the Social Democrats, who had the junior role in Merkel's last government and were pushed to the sidelines in many key debates because they held no sway in the finance ministry.

The Free Democrats' leader Christian Lindner, who ran on a platform of tax cuts and a skeptical stance on Macron's eurozone plans, staked a claim even before last month's general election for his party to take over the finance ministry. That seems to have struck a chord with the German public.

In a Civey survey this week, 38 percent of all respondents said the ministry should be led by the FDP, ahead of 29 percent arguing for the CDU, 13 percent for a Greens-led ministry and 6 percent favoring Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU).

Speculation in Berlin about potential FDP candidates for the job has focused on names such as European Investment Bank President Werner Hoyer, deputy party leader Wolfgang Kubicki and Volker Wissing, a regional economy minister in Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as Lindner himself. But the Greens have fired a warning shot across the liberals' bows.

Party leader Simone Peter said in a newspaper interview this week that the FDP should “not assume that the finance ministry is set for them,” adding that ministry posts won’t be divided up between the parties “until the very end” of negotiations.

Debt declined

What’s already sure is that whoever leads the finance ministry won’t have enough money to push through all the demands put forward by the four parties around the negotiating table.

Over the next four years, Germany can spend close to €30 billion on new policy initiatives without having to increase the country’s debt load, according to an internal estimate from the CDU-controlled finance ministry.

However, financing all of the policies proposed by the likely coalition partners — such as additional support for families demanded by the Greens, the FDP’s wish to scrap the so-called solidarity tax, expanding pension payments for mothers as demanded by the Bavarian CSU or the CDU's plan to lower income taxes — would amount to around €100 billion in additional spending over four years.

"Not on our watch." That was the clear message on debt from Merkel’s conservatives — who see their balanced budget as a symbol of the superiority of Germany’s economic model over other debt-ridden countries in Europe — ahead of the most recent round of exploratory talks on Tuesday.

They succeeded in getting all four parties to commit not to create new debt in the coming four-year parliamentary term. An internal document in which the parties laid down the result of Tuesday’s talks stated that “the interlocutors agree that … they want a balanced budget."

Inevitably, that means no party is going to get everything it wants. Much of the coalition wrangling will be about which policies get financed and which fall by the wayside.

“The problem is, if we consider all the wishes for tax cuts the FDP has brought forward, there won’t be any [money] left for anything else,” said Daniel Caspary, who leads the group of CDU MEPs in the European Parliament.

Europe question

It took until 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening until "Europe" was put on the agenda in the exploratory talks. But it will loom large sooner or later.

There is disagreement — both between parties and sometimes within them — on how to deal with Macron's eurozone proposals. Throughout the election campaign, the FDP made clear that it would oppose plans to further integrate the eurozone if that included the pooling of debt, as France advocates. The Bavarian CSU has expressed similar skepticism, albeit not quite as explicitly.

The Greens, meanwhile, are generally supportive of Macron's plans.

“We can’t afford to tell France, 'Thanks for your suggestions, we'll get back to you in four years when it's easier to form a majority'" — Franziska Brantner, Green MP

Well aware of those tensions in the ranks, Merkel has made clear that she wants to agree on a clear line on eurozone reforms in the talks before taking further steps. But that won't be easy.

Macron suggested a robust eurozone budget of multiple percentage points of the EU's GDP; but even fresh money for just one percentage point of GDP would already amount to some €30 billion for Germany — pretty much the amount of money that the internal finance ministry estimate earmarked as the upper limit for all additional spending over four years.

Germany is already likely to be on the hook for more money for European integration as a result of Brexit. To plug the gap left by the Brits and fund new priorities such as border control and increased defense cooperation, Berlin may have to pay "€5 billion plus" per year into the EU budget, according to the estimate of a high-ranking German official. That's before any eurozone reforms come into play.

On Tuesday, the negotiating teams parted around midnight, putting off the bulk of the discussion on European policy to their next meeting Thursday.

On Wednesday, a group of four senior figures — Manfred Weber from the CSU, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff of the FDP, the Greens' Reinhard Bütikofer and the CDU’s Jens Spahn — met to discuss Thursday's agenda. They agreed to send a gesture of openness to Macron — or “take Macron’s hand,” as one official put it — without establishing new financial transfers, according to sources familiar with the talks.

But a final agreement on eurozone reform is still far away.

“That’s not going to be an easy topic in the negotiations,” said Franziska Brantner, a member of the German parliament for the Greens. “We can’t afford to tell France, 'Thanks for your suggestions, we'll get back to you in four years when it's easier to form a majority.'"