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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Politico: Berlin’s Brexit déjà vu

This week the Spectator’s James Kirkup documented how David Cameron misread Merkel from the beginning. “Cake was never on her menu, either before or after the referendum,” he wrote.

It seems the more Merkel resisted Downing Street’s overtures, the more convinced the Conservative Party became it was all just part of an elaborate negotiating ritual, as if Germans had suddenly become masters of subtlety.

Instead of acknowledging that Germany’s commitment to the EU’s four freedoms is its raison d’état, Tory expectations that “Mutti” Merkel would come to the rescue with a workaround, Mary Poppins-like, only intensified.[...]

To complete that déjà vu feeling, look for breathless predictions that Friedrich Merz, a leading candidate to replace Merkel with a long history of mandates for investment firms, gets why Europe needs to cut the U.K. some slack.

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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.

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