New Statesman: With Germany’s political future in the balance, centrist “Merkel voters” will be crucial

 To understand the political dynamics, contemplate the historical choice at the heart of Merkelism. Between 1998 and 2005 a “red-green” coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens modernised the recently reunified country: liberalising the old federal republic’s conservative social policies; paving the way for a multi-ethnic conception of German identity; deploying troops into combat abroad for the first time since 1945; prodding industries towards a greener future; and introducing welfare cuts purporting to adapt the economy to globalisation. The fundamental choice made by Merkel’s four governments from 2005 has been to continue the country on that trajectory, rather than to deviate from it.

That explains Merkelism’s strengths: its moderation, the stability of its course and the cautiously progressive measures often purloined from the SPD (modern family policies, the minimum wage) and Green traditions (ending nuclear power, admitting over one million refugees). It also explains Merkelism’s weaknesses: its reactiveness and preference for the more comfortable work of bedding in previous reforms over developing new ones for the future. [...]

Merkel’s gambit will loom over the aftermath too, by shaping the range of possible coalition governments. First, the electoral cost of nabbing red-green “Merkel voters” has been the transfer of some right-wing voters to a party, the AfD, that is too toxic to include in coalition calculations. Second, the socio-economic shifts of the past two decades, expanding the pool of economically centrist but socially liberal voters, have benefited the Greens most of all. Both of these trends give the left, and especially the Greens, more paths to power and make the most likely outcome a mould-breaking CDU/CSU-Green coalition. An apt legacy for Angela Merkel.

read the article

The Guardian: Bild, Merkel and the culture wars: the inside story of Germany’s biggest tabloid

 Today Bild is paradoxically less influential than it was in the 60s, but more politically important. “I read it first in the morning because it is the agenda-setter,” says Josef Joffe, the publisher-editor of the liberal weekly, Die Zeit. “Politicos in Berlin probably read it first in the morning as well.” The paper enjoys a close relationship with the German political elite. The former German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was one of the best men at the wedding of former Bild editor, Kai Diekmann, and in 2008, Diekmann performed the same role for Kohl at his wedding. “Kohl rules with Bild,” the Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll wrote, and Kohl’s successor as chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, affirmed the practice: “To govern I need Bild, Bild Sunday’s edition, and the telly,” he once said. [...]

Reichelt’s agenda is marked less by novelty than by a chest-crunching resuscitation of Bild’s core commitments: pro-US, pro-Nato, pro-Israel, pro-austerity, pro-capital, anti-Russia, anti-China. According to the Bild worldview, the best way to counter the left is to portray its demands as totalitarian, and the best way to kill off the far right is to cannibalise its grievances. While Bild prints relatively little material that a supporter of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would object to, Reichelt sees the party as a threat to his effort to remake the German political scene. “We want nothing to do with the imbeciles of the AfD,” he told me. “The way to destroy them is to make room for their voters in what used to be the political mainstream of this country.” [...]

As editor, Reichelt sees himself less as a news impresario than as an emotional entrepreneur. “Journalism is basically about emotions, as all of the other news outlets in this country seem to have forgotten,” he told me. Reichelt likes to point out what he sees as the shared delusions of the more “respectable” German press. He gave the example of Merkel, around whom he said the press had created an “elaborate mythology” that she has such natural wit and is extremely clever, whereas her skill lay in identifying the direction of the prevailing winds.

read the article or listen to the podcast

Politico: German conservatives’ eurobond awakening

Countries would not be allowed to use the money in the fund to repay existing obligations, which in Italy’s case totals about €2.5 trillion. The bonds sold to seed the fund would be issued in the name of the EU. That means individual members would only be responsible for repaying their own share (to be determined by the European Commission) and not liable for others’ portions.

At least in theory. It’s hard to imagine that Germany (even if it’s not legally bound) would allow the EU to default on the bonds if Italy or Spain couldn’t pay what they owed. The fallout would be too damaging. Such concerns are just one reason German conservatives rejected similar plans in the past. [...]

Unlike the euro crisis, which triggered dramatic turbulence in financial markets but left German industry unscathed, the corona pandemic threatens Germany’s own economic stability. The nations in the eye of the euro crisis storm, such as Portugal and Greece, were not key German trading partners. The countries in focus now — especially Italy — are a different story. [...]

The far-right Alternative for Germany might have had more luck mounting a counterattack if it weren’t consumed by a civil war over some leaders' ties to neo-Nazi elements.

read the article

EURACTIV: Crisis-ridden SPD wins state parliamentary elections in Hamburg

With voter turnout at 62%, a large increase from the historic low in 2015, the city of Hamburg delivered a clear win for left-wing parties. While the SPD lost 6% of its vote share from the previous election in 2015, it remains the top party in the city by a wide margin. The election results indicate the likely continuation of the coalition between the SPD and Greens, and lead candidate for the Greens Katharina Fegebank would then continue on as the city’s second mayor.

The two parties further consolidated their majority, receiving a combined 63.2% of the vote compared to 57.9% five years ago. But the Greens will have a more prominent position now, having jumped from 12.3% to 24.2%. [...]

CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak called it a “bitter day for the CDU…there’s no way to sugarcoat it” and admitted that “what happened in Thuringia didn’t help.” Saarland’s state premier, Tobias Hans, called the Hamburg election “a result that must scare us, even as a federal party.” He went further calling the party “an up-to-date picture of lack of leadership,” particularly after the Thuringian crisis.

read the article

Spiegel: The German Conservatives' Faustian Pact With the Far-Right

What happened in Thuringia this week -- where a center-right politician was elected governor with the help of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party -- was a milestone for the AfD. It was the first time the party, which has been criticized for being extremist and at times openly anti-Semitic, has helped to elect the leader of a state government. [...]

What remains is the embarrassment for mainstream conservatives, especially for CDU and FDP leaders in Berlin, who didn't intervene soon enough. What remains is the fact that conservatives in Thuringia allowed themselves to be seduced by the AfD. What remains is a triumph for Björn Höcke, the right-wing extremist state leader of the AfD in Thuringia, who made those on the center-right look like fools. What remains is the damage caused to liberal democracy. [...]

In their book, "How Democracies Die," Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt began with the chapter, "Fateful Alliances." This is how it usually begins, they write: Representatives of the current system ally themselves with its enemies in order to maintain their grip on power. That's how it was in the Weimar Republic, where Hitler wouldn't have stood a chance without an invitation from conservatives. According to Levitsky's and Ziblatt's analysis, this has also been the case in Brazil, Peru and Venezuela.

read the article

The Irish Times: Germany has suffered a political earthquake. What happened?

He accepted, as the price for power, votes from the AfD. It began life as a euro bailout protest party but has over time radicalised into a hard-right party with an increasingly influential far-right wing. Thuringia’s AfD, and its head Björn Höcke, is head of this far-right wing. He calls himself a “social patriot” while critics accuse him of flirting with Holocaust denial and relativising Nazi crimes. As minister president, critics warn, Kemmerich will be dependent on this extremist support to govern.[...]

Because the Thuringian tremor could crack the federal government. Until now a gentleman’s agreement existed among all other parties not to co-operate with, or allow support from, the AfD. Chancellor Merkel described Wednesday’s vote as “unforgivable” and has demanded the parliamentary decision be revoked. Her successor as CDU leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, has attacked her party colleagues in Thuringia for breaking their own internal party agreement to boycott the AfD. [...]

With quiet triumph. After just seven years in business, it now sits in all of Germany’s 16 state parliaments and is the largest opposition party in the federal chamber, the Bundestag. In Thuringia it is the second-largest grouping. While the local CDU and FDP fear a snap election, the wrath of other parties and of local voters, the AfD can sit back and watch the drama unfold.

read the article

The Local: Could Merkel’s Christian Democrats really work with the far-right AfD?

But on Monday an open letter signed by 17 local CDU officials and reported on by the Ostthüringer Zeitung, urges the party to start "open-ended talks" with the AfD. They consider it unthinkable that "almost a quarter of the voters" in Thuringia "should remain outside the talks". [...]

The AfD surged into second place with 23.4 percent, more than doubling its share of the vote since the last state election in 2014, while the CDU tumbled down to 21.8 percent, from 33.5 percent in 2014. [...]

The CDU previously ruled out working with the Left, but Thuringia CDU leader Mohring said he was open to talks with the party's local leader Ramelow.

read the article

Politico: Far left and right outflank center in regional German vote

The far-left Die Linke party largely held steady to secure first place at 31 percent of the vote in the state of Thuringia, thanks in part to the popularity of state premier Bodo Ramelow, according to preliminary results. Meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) once again demonstrated its strong support in the east of the country by surging ahead to finish second at 23.4 percent, more than doubling its vote share in the last election of 2014. [...]

The ballot in the state of a little more than 2 million is expected to have limited impact at national level as Thuringia is a rural region of small towns rather than teeming metropolises. However, the result means efforts to build a coalition will be fraught, testing party red lines. The prior coalition made up of Die Linke, the SPD and the Greens now falls short of a majority. [...]

All parties have ruled out working with the AfD. Its regional leader, Björn Höcke, is a right-wing firebrand whose controversial statements about the Nazi era have prompted some within the party to try to oust him from its ranks.

read the article

Politico: The greening of Germany

Over the past year, support for the country’s environmental party has doubled. In several recent polls the Greens have even overtaken Chancellor Angela Merkel’s seemingly unbeatable Christian Democrats (informally known as the “Blacks” in Germany’s party color spectrum). [...]

While Bütikofer said there’s no single reason for the Green’s recent success, he cited the party’s long-standing commitment to combatting climate change, now Germans’ top political priority, as essential.[...]

Though Merkel’s ministers are dutifully ploughing through the fine print of the coalition agreement, trying to combine ideological opposites means the government’s priorities are more about preserving the status quo than breaking new ground. [...]

In last month’s European election, 1.5 million voters defected from the Social Democrats to the Greens. Many left-leaning voters support the Greens because they feel the Social Democrats have violated their ideals by backing painful social reforms. [...]

What’s more, Germans have become much more comfortable with a party many used to regard as far out of the mainstream. Two-thirds of Germans think the Greens will play an important role in shaping the country’s politics in the coming years, according to a study published this month. More than half believe the party represents modern, centrist policies.

read the article

Foreign Policy: The Next Merkel? Not Quite

It’s true that surveys show Kramp-Karrenbauer’s vague policy agenda is highly popular with Social Democrats and Greens (the latter who have benefited in recent years from the SPD’s Merkel-fueled collapse). Greens polled by the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel viewed her even more positively (65 percent) than do CDU members (62 percent). “If the CDU elects a woman, and twice in a row,” a Berlin Green Party member told FP, “it shows that all of the other parties can too, but they’re not doing it. It shows them up.” With such star quality, Kramp-Karrenbauer might even prove able to demobilize the Greens in the same way Merkel did the SPD.

At the same time, many conservatives are hoping she can leverage her Catholic faith to win back far-right voters. Throughout her career, Kramp-Karrenbauer has been an avowed, if mild-mannered, social conservative: She’s on the record against same-sex marriage, and she firmly opposes any loosening of Germany’s relatively restrictive abortion laws; her rhetoric on migration policy—which has included the suggestion of sending refugees back to Syria—has occasionally fallen on the CDU’s far-right wing. Indeed, there’s little reason to believe that she would have initiated any of the openly liberal social policies that Merkel undertook in recent years, such as ending mandatory military conscription and initiating conciliatory dialogue between the government and Germany’s Muslim community.

This, however, is the hitch in the logic of Kramp-Karrenbauer as savior of the party and leader of a more harmonious, united nation. The same surveys that show her fawned over by the left also show her rejected categorically by AfD voters and even seen as somewhat suspect by many traditional conservatives. In fact, only 4 percent of AfD backers in the Spiegel poll see her favorably. (SPD support for her is 10 times greater.) Just 2 percent of the AfD supporters surveyed said they believed that Kramp-Karrenbauer could lure back stray former CDU conservatives now voting AfD. Another poll yielded a similar result: AfD supporters were the least convinced of all the parties that she would unite the CDU. [...]

A political commentator for the conservative daily Die Welt, Susanne Gaschke, summed up the problem concisely: “From the beginning, there was hatred in certain circles for Angela Merkel, which had nothing at all to do with her policies. … The Merkel hatred of the past three years, in my opinion, has at least as much to do with frustrated masculinity as with concrete and legitimate questions about migration.” Just maybe, hopes Gaschke, Kramp-Karrenbauer will catch less of it than Merkel: “Perhaps it is enough that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has three children and neither Merkel nor East German.” Alas, nothing points in that direction now—on the contrary.

read the article

The Atlantic: A Nonbinding Migration Pact Is Roiling Politics in Europe

The United Nations Global Migration Compact, signed this week by 164 countries, has been years in the making, and includes relatively uncontroversial goals like improving data collection. In a sign of its import, German Chancellor Angela Merkel—whose legacy will likely be defined by her decision to allow more than 1 million refugees into her country in 2015 and 2016—flew in to Marrakech, Morocco, for the signing ceremony, arguing that it was “worth it to fight for this pact.” [...]

More than half a dozen other European countries have also questioned whether to join the pact in the lead-up to this week’s UN gathering. The first domino to fall was Austria, which pulled out of the agreement in October despite negotiating it on behalf of all European Union countries (except Hungary). The country’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, leads a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and has shifted his country sharply to the right on migration since taking office a year ago. Since then, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have all said they will not sign it, either. [...]

Why is the UN compact, which is non-binding, so controversial? Arguments against it include the idea that it will ultimately lead to a “human right to migration” and that domestic courts could use it in deciding immigration cases. That it explicitly states that it upholds national sovereignty and has no legal standing has done little to assuage those concerns. [...]

As the debate in Germany shows, rhetorical pressure from the far right has forced mainstream parties to talk differently about migration issues—and to debate things like this compact that previously might have been taken for granted.

read the article

Spiegel: Rough Road Ahead for the Merkel Dynasty

Indeed, after the campaign in recent weeks and after their speeches on Friday, nobody could say that the CDU did not have a clear alternative. And ultimately, it chose Kramp-Karrenbauer by the slim margin of 51.75 percent to 48.52 percent. Merkel had brought her to Berlin from her position as governor of the tiny state of Saarland in February of this year to prepare her for this moment. Now, AKK, as she is known, takes over from Merkel as the new leader of the party.

Kramp-Karrenbauer did not want to break with the course charted by Angela Merkel. Indeed, she took a page out of Gerhard Schröder's book, who at the end of the Helmut Kohl era promised that he didn't want to do everything differently, but he did intend to do some things better. In a party that has traditionally tended to shy away from taking risks and embarking on political experiments, her message proved more appealing than that of her rival. [...]

Her first task, however, is that of ensuring that the party doesn't split apart, which appears to be the main challenge facing her at the moment. The race between her and Merz was extremely close, with just 35 votes out of 999 separating the two. The fact that a woman has been chosen to replace a woman as the leader of a party that had been run by men for half a century shows just how fundamentally Merkel has modernized the CDU. But just as many feared that Merz was in it primarily to get revenge on Merkel for having cut short his political ambitions almost two decades ago, Kramp-Karrenbauer will now have to contend with those who contend that she represents the continuation of a Merkel dynasty. The chancellor, in any case, would seem to have taken a huge step toward choosing her own successor in the Chancellery.

read the article

Politico: A weakened Merkel still gets her way

The scale of Kramp-Karrenbauer’s challenge in uniting the CDU is clear from the margin of her victory — she squeaked home with less than 52 percent of the vote in a run-off against Friedrich Merz, a veteran Merkel critic who wanted to shift the party to the right. Another right-winger, Health Minister Jens Spahn, was eliminated in the first round of voting but, at the age of 38, his influence is likely to grow in the years ahead. [...]

AKK has been portrayed as a mini-Merkel. But she is much more of a traditional CDU politician than the chancellor. A Catholic, she joined the party in her late teens and worked her way up through local and regional politics to become premier of Saarland, in Germany’s far west. She is socially conservative, opposed to gay marriage, and has taken a tougher line than Merkel on migration — the issue that has become a lightning rod for the chancellor’s critics.

She also advocates bringing back military service as part of a plan for young people to spend a year working for the benefit of society. Merkel abolished conscription — a decision she defended in Hamburg, to only a smattering of applause. [...]

Not only did the party choose Kramp-Karrenbauer as its leader, delegates also supported the new U.N. pact on migration — an accord that has been attacked by right-wingers across Europe.

read the article

Deutsche Welle: Majority of Germans want Chancellor Angela Merkel to complete term

The poll showed that a vast majority of voters want Merkel to complete her tenure, which ends in 2021. More than three-quarters of her party voters feel she should continue. More than half of the supporters of environmentalist Greens, socialist Left Party and center-left SPD also agree. [...]

The voters were not that generous to Merkel's Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who is stepping down as the head of CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU. Nearly three in every four voters feel that Seehofer should also quit his job in the federal government.

The polls put Merkel ally and CDU Secretary General Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer ahead in the race for CDU leadership. Kramp-Karrenbauer has the backing of 46 percent of her party voters. She was followed by Friedrich Merz, a financial manager who has spent the past nine years out of politics, who polled 31 percent. Jens Spahn, the 38-year-old health minister and a Merkel critic, managed just 12 percent. [...]

According to the poll, if federal elections were held this Sunday, 23 percent of Germans would vote for the Greens. More than a quarter said they would vote for CDU/CSU.

read the article

Deutsche Welle: German parliament rows over UN Migration Compact

"Millions of people from crisis-stricken regions around the world are being encouraged to get on the road," said AfD leader Alexander Gauland. "Leftist dreamers and globalist elites want to secretly turn our country from a nation state into a settlement area."

Though the motion was swiftly rejected once the debate was over, the AfD considered it a victory to get it on the agenda at all, since the German government is under no obligation to ask for the parliament's approval to ratify the non-legally binding compact. [...]

"It should have been the task of the government long ago to explain the migration compact factually and publicly. You were silent for too long, and that allowed these conspiracy theories to start in the first place," said Stamp, a member of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP).

read the article

Social Europe: The SPD May Deal The Final Blow To Angela Merkel’s Chancellorship

The spiral downwards for the ruling CDU/CSU and the SPD was confirmed by an EMNID opinion poll on 27 October where 24 per cent said they would vote for the CDU/CSU in the next federal elections and 15 per cent for the SPD. The Greens were on 20 per cent and the AfD on 16 per cent, both ahead of the SPD.

The AfD is the party that has benefited most from the migration policy of Merkel and from her move to the centre of German politics leaving a gap on the right. The key to the party’s rise in 2014-15 was the establishment status it received from its early champions, who included a former culture editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, a professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, and – most significant – a former IBM executive and president of the Federation of German Industry, Hans-Olaf Henkel, who privately financed the party’s early activities. [...]

The Greens and the AfD are the only parties that have continued to improve their electoral position since the federal elections in 2017, where the Greens only came in sixth place. The Greens pose a threat to Germany’s two traditional political Volkspartei. The Social Democrats are losing young, metropolitan and pro-European supporters to the Greens. The Greens have also been able to appeal to many centrist supporters of the CDU/CSU who have become uncomfortable with their shift to the right. In the German state of Baden-Württemberg, the Greens are the senior partner in the coalition with the CDU.

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: A Departure With Consequences

Anyone who imagines her a moderate Christian Democrat will soon discover otherwise: “AKK”, as she is called by her parliamentary colleagues, attracted attention this August by calling for the reestablishment of mandatory military conscription after its suspension in 2011. In a discussion with the German journalist Anne Will a day before Merkel’s announcement, AKK spoke about the need to “protect creation,” i.e., prevent abortions, and years before made stirred controversy by suggesting that legalizing gay marriage could open the door to group marriages or even marriages between relatives. Most recently she spoke in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, lumping together the “social populism” of the AfD, Die Linke, and even the Social Democrats, and is in favor of reforming the market economy by bolstering the role of individual responsibility. This includes, for example, regulating the housing crisis not through state intervention but even more private competition.[...]

Reflecting the general trend of the country, three of the likely candidates lean to the right, but in different ways. With Kramp-Karrenbauer, Spahn, or Merz, the CDU would take a more openly conservative line against left-wing policies on social questions. Spahn and Merz stand for policies similar to those of conservative Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who governs in coalition with the even more reactionary FPÖ: namely, a staunch economic liberalism that is quite open to the far right, though Merz’s radical neoliberal agenda and aspirations for EU reform resemble the model of Emmanuel Macron. Spahn, the youngest of the three, has avoided polemics recently and kept himself out of foreign policy issues entirely, though this ultimately may reduce his chances as he no longer stands out as an international and controversial figure. Merz, on the other hand, has already been stylized as Christian Democracy’s “savior” by the German press for representing a balance between liberal economic policies and traditional values. [...]

Kramp-Karrenbauer would certainly offer a counterbalance to this trend. She could deflect the AfD threatening to become the strongest force in the elections in the eastern German states next year with her record of conservative values and would therefore appear to be a promising candidate. But just a few weeks ago Ralph Brinkhaus, a figure close to Spahn, was elected the CDU’s new parliamentary group leader, in an offensive directed against a Merkel-loyalist. Either candidate can hope for victory.

read the article

Politico: The dispensable chancellor

Visions of the German chancellor as the only person standing between humanity and the apocalypse became fashionable after U.S. President Donald Trump’s election to the White House. But they were always overblown. Merkel herself knows that Germany — with its poorly-equipped military, deeply ingrained pacifism and historical hang-ups — is in no position to defend the West.[...]

But now Germany, too, has become more politically unstable, with the rise of the far right populist Alternative for Deutschland and support for the two establishment parties of the post-war order — Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrats — collapsing.[...]

But Merkel is also the victim of larger social forces sweeping the West, which have led to the collapse of the political center she bloodlessly embodied. Given Germany’s history and taboos, the sort of mass, nationalist political movements present in most other Western countries had eluded it since the end of World War II. That special dispensation, regretfully, is now over. In this sense, Germany is becoming more “normal.”

read the article

Politico: Merkel metrics: Measuring a legacy

With Angela Merkel’s announcement that she will stand down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, the political career of the chancellor who became known for her staying power is drawing to a close.

Merkel has been Germany’s chancellor since 2005, but took the reins of the CDU five years prior, when the party was in opposition.

As the race to replace her as leader of the party — and eventually the country — kicks off, here is a look back at Merkel’s years as chancellor and CDU chief.

read the article

Politico: Merkel’s twilight heralds German turmoil

The decision injects further instability into German politics, increasing the likelihood that Merkel’s grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), already hanging by a thread, will collapse in the coming months. What’s more, it now appears inevitable that the race to succeed her atop the CDU will unleash a bitter battle over its direction, one that will further distract the party from governing.[...]

While Merkel said she intends to remain chancellor until the end of the legislative period in 2021, her decision not to run again for the CDU’s chairmanship when her term expires in December unleashed forces she can no longer control.[...]

She insisted the move wasn’t triggered by Sunday’s election, but by her decision over the summer, which she had not previously shared with the public, not to pursue another term as chancellor. Handing over the reins of the party now would ease the transition and allow the CDU, still Germany’s dominant party despite recent losses, to retain its strength, she argued. If Merkel really planned Monday’s move months ago, she kept the decision close to her chest, not even telling Kramp-Karrenbauer, who on Sunday evening insisted Merkel intended to run again for the CDU chairmanship.[...]

A persistent critique of Merkel in the CDU’s more conservative quarters has long been that she moved the party too far to the left, abandoning its roots. Much of that criticism has focused on the refugee crisis but it extends to social issues as well, with Merkel skeptics accusing her of steering the party away from its traditional values on family and religion. Merkel’s belief that “Islam is a part of Germany” is one of a number of her positions that conservatives take issue with.

read the article