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.

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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.

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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.

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Jacobin Magazine: Can Anyone Save the SPD?

But what comes next? The contradiction that broke Nahles — the need to renew the SPD while simultaneously governing with the conservative CDU — remains as urgent as ever. And this also means that no one is particularly keen to occupy the newly vacated leadership spots. In the immediate term, the party will be led by a three-person commission consisting of Malu Dreyer, minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate, Manuela Schwesig, minister-president of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, outgoing SPD parliamentary speaker in Hesse. All three emphasize that their appointment is temporary. Finance minister Olaf Scholz also turned down the job, and the party’s uppermost layers continue to grow noticeably thinner. [...]

In an awkward attempt to seem more “authentic,” Barley bravely campaigned across the country in a blue hoodie adorned with the stars of the European Union. But hardly anyone fell for her calculated, plastic European hype and nor did anyone believe the promises about climate protection and turning the EU into a “social union.” Ultimately, most voters interested in such motifs ended up voting for the Greens instead. Barley was forced to defend the SPD’s policy in favor of so-called “upload filters” — accused of driving online censorship — even though she was on record opposing the law. This decision cost the party the youth vote, with exit polls last month indicating that only 10 percent of first-time voters opted for the SPD. [...]

For years now, the SPD’s image has been characterized by a toxic mixture of cowardice and being utterly overwhelmed by events. Thus, any break with the status quo would have to be of a three-fold nature: a leadership change, a political shift, and a cultural transformation. Is the party still a locomotive into the future, or a co-manager of the existing order? Can it withstand competitive internal elections and tensions, will it find the words to talk about its historic decline and the courage for a new beginning? [...]

Regardless of who emerges victorious from its internal power struggle, the SPD can no longer afford to sidestep the question of the welfare state in the twenty-first century. The same is true of the need for a sober analysis of the party’s spending and redistribution policies both in Germany and the EU as a whole. A sustainable, left-wing industrial policy — thus far no party celebrity has been willing to use those three magic words, “Green New Deal” — could point the way towards a new, progressive program. The party would then have to use that program to compete with Die Linke and the Greens, while at the same time revolutionizing itself from within.

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Politico: Germany passes controversial migration law

The new law's aim, according to its draft version, is to "significantly increase" the proportion of successful deportations. Approximately half of the planned 188,000 deportations from Germany since 2015 failed or were not carried out, according to interior ministry data.

Yet the policy package also included measures to improve access to Germany's labor market for skilled migrants. For instance, migrants without asylum status who arrived before last summer will be able to stay for the time being if they have a job and speak German. In addition, it scrapped previous rules that required German employers to prove that they found no German or other EU citizen to take the job in order to employ a skilled non-EU migrant. [...]

Ahead of Friday's Bundestag debate, the Greens and the far-left Die Linke party had unsuccessfully tried to remove the vote on the legislative package, which they said infringed on asylum seekers' rights and had been rushed through parliament, from the agenda.

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Social Europe: Searching For Germany’s Volkspartei

Of course, the political landscape in Hesse and Bavaria is not homogenous, forcing separate analysis to explain the results. This is necessary despite their similarities. The most remarkable being, for the first time, the AfD will enter Bavaria’s parliament, Maximilianeum, and Hesse’s Hessischer. A far-right party with a taste for the politically distasteful making such strides in Germany is alarming. The Greens are closing in from another direction, up to 24 percent in one recent poll, with the SPD down to 13 percent. [...]

One must consider the contexts that produce results that is shaking up Germany’s politics to the extent that Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to announce she’d step down in 2021, much earlier than she would have wanted to. Of course, no sage who follows German politics would wager Ms. Merkel had plans to seek another term. She delivered a strong economy prior to 2017. Her exit is a chance for the country’s political centre to strengthen.[...]

The Greens’ success in Bavaria is not a SPD death knell. It’s a sign of a weakening political middle. It took the AfD a single run in Bavaria to achieve (10.7 percent) what the Greens took 36 years to achieve with their 17.5 percent win. Until now, the Greens had been in single digits ever since they burst onto Bavaria’s political scene. The last time the SPD got their lowest score, 18.6 percent, was in 2008. Bavarians do not have an enduring love for the Greens. Proclamations such as “Green is the new Red,” based on an infatuation, are unwise. The Hessians have had a relatively mature affair with the Greens, giving them a mandate in the early 80s and allowing their slow and steady progress to date. These contrasting histories do not provide a full explanation for the SPD’s loss in either case.

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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.

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Politico: Merkel’s coalition lives to fight another day — just

Angela Merkel’s “grand coalition” of conservatives and Social Democrats (popularly known as the “GroKo”) suffered substantial, though not crippling, losses in a regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday. While the result was somewhat better than predicted for the major parties and should quiet fears of an imminent coalition collapse, it highlighted how fragile and unloved the Berlin government has become after little more than half a year in office.[...]

The chancellor’s CDU won 27 percent of the vote in Hesse, down from 38.3 percent in the last election in 2013, while the Social Democrats (SPD) finished second with 20.1 percent, dropping from 30.7 percent, according to a projection by Infratest dimap, a polling institute, for ARD public television. The Greens won 19.6 percent, nearly doubling their 2013 result.[...]

National issues dominated the campaign in Hesse, a wealthy region that is home to Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt. That turned the election into a referendum on the performance of Merkel’s coalition with the SPD, which has been plagued by infighting since it took office in March.[...]

Above all, the result signals that German politics have become more volatile than at any time since World War II, meaning established parties are no longer able to rely on the allegiance of core constituencies. For example, nearly 75 percent of voters who abandoned the CDU and more than 50 percent of those who left the SPD said they did so in order to “send the party a message.”

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Jacobin Magazine: A Pale Shade of Green

But the performance spike comes as somewhat of a surprise: the Greens netted a mediocre 8.5 percent in last year’s federal elections, almost unchanged from 2013. The party hasn’t veered much from its centrist path since its failed attempt to form a federal coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) following the 2017 general election — moves that disgruntled the Greens’ more radical youth wing. But if the party hasn’t changed, what else has?

The answer lies in the performance of Germany’s ruling parties, today joined in a grand coalition. Following multiple cabinet showdowns this summer, each of which brought the gears of government to a halt, discontented voters from all the ruling parties — the CDU/CSU and the social-democratic SPD — seem to be drifting toward the Greens. Just over two-fifths of the Green’s new supporters have migrated from the SPD and a quarter have wandered over from the CDU/CSU, according to a poll published in Die Welt newspaper.[...]

Where a critical stance towards capitalism and the ecological damage wreaked by profit-makers in industrialized societies once featured highly in the Greens’ manifesto, the party now offers centrist solutions palatable to German capital. At one point the Greens stopped saying “the system is broken” and started talking about “capitalism in service of the people.”[...]

More recently, the Greens have set their sights on becoming a Volkspartei, a big-tent party attracting voters from different sections of society. Traditionally, their voter base has been somewhat elitist: highly educated, largely western German, urban and middle class.

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Bloomberg: German Voters Are Tired of Immigration Politics

Although German states have fewer powers than those in the U.S., state elections are extremely important. They’re where the parties try out electoral platforms, tactics, and alliances, and where national political stars are born. Voters are active: The turnout in Bavaria on Sunday was 72.4 percent, only slightly lower than the 76.2 percent that voted at last year’s national election. [...]

The election proved that Seehofer’s tactics had been a big mistake. With just 10.2 percent of the vote, the AfD did worse than in last year’s national election, when it won 12.4 percent in Bavaria and 12.6 percent nationwide. The CSU lost some 180,000 votes to the nationalist party – but it lost as many to the Greens and almost as many to the Free Voters of Bavaria, another local party with centrist politics and a focus on community affairs. [...]

A moderate stance on immigration and more attention to local affairs and the environment probably would’ve given the CSU a stronger result without undermining the nationwide coalition. As it is, Seehofer in particular comes out of the election weakened, and Merkel must be quietly pleased despite a loss for her allies. Even if Seehofer manages to hold onto the party leader’s job, the idea of fighting the AfD by being more like the AfD is discredited now. The Greens’ compassionate stance on immigration aligned much better with the CSU voters’ values – and with the stance of the Bavarian Catholic Church, for that matter – than Seehofer’s attempts to shove asylum seekers back from Germany’s borders. [...]

One complication for Merkel is that the Social Democratic Party, part of the federal ruling coalition, did terribly in Bavaria. With 9.7 percent of the vote, the once-formidable workers’ party is sinking into irrelevance. Its nationwide polling numbers are dismal: It consistently lags behind the Afd now and is beginning to fall behind the Greens. The latter, with a political program that appeals to millennials and liberal voters in general, have a chance to turn themselves from an environmentally focused party into the biggest center-left force – the slot in the political spectrum that the SPD thought it would own forever. Now the Social Democrats’ string of defeats means they may rethink their participation in the governing coalition; if they do, a new election is likely. Merkel wouldn’t be the conservatives’ uncontested choice to lead the CSU into it.

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Jacobin Magazine: Last Chance, SPD

The report concluded that the SPD is no longer perceived as a credible voice on issues of social and economic justice. It argued that Martin Schulz’s election as leader had been a small step in the right direction, but that the many compromises among the party leadership (whose main goal seems to be avoiding having to distance themselves from the neoliberal reforms they imposed in government in the mid-2000s) meant that his election slogans about social justice rang hollow. Above all, the report emphasized a “collective failure of leadership” — not only were Schulz and his predecessor Sigmar Gabriel at fault, but the entire leadership which had set the party’s agenda for years. Despite these blunt truths, and earlier announcements that the party would be seeking to renew itself, the SPD has made an almost pathological choice to continue with more of the same. [...]

The SPD now promised to reinvent itself while in government and sent both Martin Schulz and Sigmar Gabriel into (temporary) political retirement. “Renewal,” however, meant that not a single member of the party’s left wing joined the new leadership: no one who campaigned against re-forming the grand coalition found themselves in a leading position. The only new face in the party leadership is the new general secretary, Lars Klingbeil. But Klingbeil is by no means a man of the Left; he is, in fact, a long-standing member of the Seeheimer Kreis (“Seeheim Circle”), an influential grouping on the right of the party. [...]

After the election, when it initially seemed as if the SPD would take up a position in the opposition, Nahles told journalists that the party would attack the CDU head-on. Now, she is busy explaining that Germany “can’t take in all” of the refugees. Pragmatism veering into cynical opportunism is nothing new for SPD elites, but nonetheless never fails to amaze. [...]

The list of Scholz’s political achievements is long but give the list to someone with no knowledge of the man, and they may be shocked to find out that he claims to be a social democrat. This is not to say that he could have been from the right-wing extremist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), but simply that Scholz largely embodies the archetype of a bourgeois rather than Social Democratic politician. In 2001, as the Hamburg city-state’s Senator of the Interior, he passed a law that allowed police to forcibly administer emetics to drug dealers — a measure the European Court of Human Rights later labelled a human rights violation. This, from a man who began his career as a left-wing Juso.

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Spiegel: Increasing Headwinds for Angela Merkel

Merkel's leadership is currently being questioned on all sides, with adversaries and potential rivals flooding out of the woodwork. U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to rein in Germany's economic power, French President Emmanuel Macron is backing her into a corner with his vision of a reformed Europe and back home, the SPD is hardly able to focus on governing, as concerned as it is about its own survival. On Wednesday in parliament, when Merkel took questions from German lawmakers, the Social Democrats were more aggressive in their stance toward the chancellor than some members of the opposition. [...]

Merkel's favored strategy of waiting and watching seems to have outlived its usefulness. Her ability to take into account the interests of all and to forge a compromise no longer works because she no longer has the elbow room she once did: In Berlin, she is trapped in the coalition with the SPD; in Brussels, she is hemmed in by incompatible interests; and on refugee policy, she is a prisoner of her own past. [...]

Trump has identified Merkel as one of his primary adversaries on the world stage. He watched as she got the better of one male world leader after the other - and he wants to put an end to it. He is no longer willing to provide the discounted security that he believes Germany continues to enjoy thanks to America's military might. He wants to slow down Germany's export machine and dictate to Berlin from whom it should purchase its natural gas. And Merkel still has not found a way to dissuade Trump from pursuing his crusade. [...]

Merkel's opponents, both in Germany and abroad, are closing ranks. On Wednesday evening, Marcus Söder, the governor of Bavaria and certainly not a fervent Merkel supporter, held an event in the Antiquarium in the Munich Residence, one of the most important examples of the Renaissance in Germany. Kurz, who ended Merkel's open border policy in early 2016 by closing down the Balkan Route against the German chancellor's will, was also there.

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openDemocracy: German social democrats have alienated their base and fractured Europe

But buffeted by two oil price shocks, in 1973 and 1981-82, and unable to stem the rapid rise in unemployment, the SPD lost electoral favor. For 16 years, from 1982 to 1998, the SPD was consigned to the political wilderness while Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the rival Christian Democratic Union (CDU) reigned supreme. Kohl also lured SPD supporters by adopting some of the social justice agenda: more generous unemployment benefits and new a child-rearing allowance. [...]

Schröder’s major initiative was the so-called Hartz reforms, which reduced benefits for unemployed workers and so pushed them harder to look for new jobs. As a result, workers who could not retain their privileged positions in Germany’s best-performing firms accepted low-wage temporary and part-time “mini” jobs in the low-productivity services sector. Such workers fell into a trap of low earnings and increasing economic insecurity. Unsurprisingly, they steadily transferred their allegiance from the SPD to other parties, including what now is called the Left Party, which promised to work harder for workers’ protections and rights. [...]

But Schröder aggressively promoted a narrow German national interest in European affairs. He fought for national voting rights in the Council of Ministers. To protect the German automaker Volkswagen, he blocked a European Union proposal for the reform of corporate takeover legislation. Schröder’s parochial interest was motivated by his allegiance to Volkswagen, on whose supervisory board he had sat as governor of the state of Lower Saxony.  And while Schröder rightly opposed the European Central Bank’s excessively tight monetary policy and the European Commission’s mindless pursuit of fiscal austerity, he sought only a German exemption rather than a constructive change in rules. [...]

The SPD’s intellectual influence was particularly insidious in the area of “labor market reforms.” In October 2014, Renzi announced what was to be his singular achievement: the Jobs Act. Much like the Hartz reforms, the act weakened workers’ rights and, despite claims of protective provisions, reinforced the tendency toward jobs with insecure tenures. Italian governments before Renzi’s had implemented similar reforms, which indeed increased employment. But the evidence from the past reforms was that they dulled the incentives for employers and employees to increase productivity and, hence, contributed to the steady decline in Italian productivity growth. Renzi’s Jobs Act seems destined to prolong Italy’s near-zero productivity growth.

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Deutsche Welle: Germany's Heiko Maas urged to take softer line on Russia by SPD rank and file

Ahead of the meeting, several senior SPD lawmakers voiced their irritation over Germany's top diplomat and SPD lawmaker Heiko Maas and his chiding rhetoric on Russia.

SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil stressed that relations between the two countries were "of the highest importance" for the party. [...]

Several lawmakers in the SPD continue to subscribe to former Chancellor Willy Brandt's policy of rapprochement with the former Soviet Union, otherwise known as "Ostpolitik." The center-left party still enjoys relatively strong levels of support in the former East German states, where strong ties to Russia continue to be felt to this day. [...]

Maas' chiding rhetoric marks a major shift from his predecessor Sigmar Gabriel, who before leaving office had called for sanctions on Russia to be eased, provided Moscow worked towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

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Politico: Andrea Nahles: German SPD’s last hope

To revive the party, Nahles will have to keep both centrist and left-wing factions on side and find ways to give the party a distinctive profile even as it serves in a government led by Merkel’s conservative bloc. In previous stints as Merkel’s junior partner, SPD members have complained that the chancellor takes credit for their achievements while their voters are alienated by conservative policies pursued by the coalition. [...]

Nahles, who already leads the SPD group in the Bundestag, is viewed as being on the left of the party, but has shown a pragmatic streak. She is also known for remarks that are unusually blunt for a German politician.  [...]

She is also considered a gifted political operator responsible for some of the biggest milestones in the party’s recent history. As labor minister, she put in place Germany’s first minimum wage laws. [...]

At a tense congress in January, Nahles was widely credited with stewarding the party toward another partnership with Merkel. Following a long and meandering address by the party’s then-leader Martin Schulz, she woke up the room with a short, rousing speech in which she exhorted delegates to approve coalition talks.

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Social Europe: A European Germany Returns?

There also was something in the same briefing to Kohl of which he had been unaware and that Merkel may not yet appreciate: EIB bonds do not count on the debt of Germany or any other major member state of the Union, nor need count on the debt of others. In this regard, they parallel US Treasury bonds which do not count on the debt of California or Delaware. What’s more, the servicing of EIB bonds is by the member states which gain from the investments that they fund, not by fiscal transfers from others, or from the Commission’s tax funded Own Resources. Further, aided by the Amsterdam criteria for social and environmental investments, the EIB quadrupled its investment finance in the decade from 1997 until the financial crisis to four fifths of Own Resources. [...]

Moreover, the joint EIB-EIF case has been fully grasped by Emmanuel Macron. When minister of economy and industry in the second Valls government he argued in September 2014 that to offset the low subscribed capital of the EIF the EU should access unused resources from the European Stability Mechanism. As an adviser put it : “If we could mobilise €20 to €40 billion from the ESM, for example to recapitalise the EIF, you then have a multiplier effect on the EIB that can reach almost €200 billion of public money”.

Wolfgang Schäuble opposed Macron, claiming that this was not within the ESM’s remit. But legal advice to the European Parliament declared that it was not excluded that the ESM should ‘fulfil other tasks’ to assure the stability of the euro for which a sustained recovery of the European economy is vital. Besides which the private sector multipliers from EIB investments range up to three, which could mean that the total public and private investment generated could reach some €600 billion, with further employment and income multipliers. And, because the Roosevelt New Deal was bond financed, it managed to reduce unemployment from 22% to 8% in the seven years from 1933 to 1940 with an average annual federal deficit of only 3%, i.e. the Maastricht limit.  

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Deutsche Welle: Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel meeting a test for EU financial policy

Judging by what individual representatives of the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD have said so far about Macron's reform ideas, the grand coalition partners have indeed taken different positions. Until now, Scholz has held back because he knows that within Germany he is expected to continue the solid (some say, stingy) financial policy of his CDU predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble.

However, other SPD politicians have been extremely enthusiastic about Macron's ideas. Former SPD leader Martin Schulz — who also previously served as European Parliament president — had made a positive German response to Macron's ideas a prerequisite for a new grand coalition. As recently as Wednesday, new top diplomat Maas said in Paris that he had come to "finally take the outstretched hand of Emmanuel Macron with his proposals for the renewal of Europe." [...]

However, according to Caspary, the differences in opinion do not change the common goal of strengthening the European Union. A few days ago, Merkel complained that Europe was "too weak and too slow" in many areas. She wants to change that. She agrees with Macron that without him, without France, this is not possible. "I don't believe for a second that a European project can be successful without, or against Germany," Macron told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "We are completely interdependent."

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Social Europe: What Could A Corbyn Government Inside Europe Mean For The EU’s Future ?

The left-wing Portuguese government has demonstrated how an anti-austerity policy can dramatically improve economic performance. There are proposals to close tax havens for multinational corporations and a proposal for a common consolidated corporate tax, something the UK has strongly opposed in the past. [...]

The same is true for those areas where EU policy has, in the past, been relatively progressive – digital rights, climate change, and ending global conflicts, for example. Thanks to active protests across Europe, EU policy on digital rights, defending online privacy and the ownership of personal data, has been rather progressive – yet without continued active engagement, along the lines of the Labour Party’s Digital Democracy Manifesto, there is a risk that this might be undermined by anti-terror legislation. [...]

Finally, a Corbyn-led government could change the conversation about immigration. Anti-immigration sentiment promoted by unscrupulous politicians, it can be argued, produced the refugee crisis. We live in a world of migration and it is more or less impossible to control. What is more Europe with its aging population needs migrants. Instead of creating a border security complex in which smugglers and border guards are enmeshed in an impossible business that fails to prevent the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, we need a policy of managed migration as was actually proposed by the European Commission but opposed by member states – one that involves a resettlement policy across the continent. A Corbyn-led government could push for replacing  the current exclusive and dangerous securitised approach with one based on humanitarian and development considerations.  

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Quartz: The German parliament is split over a Nazi-era abortion law that punishes doctors

In a country as progressive as Germany, it may surprise some people to know that under section 219a of the criminal code, a medical professional is forbidden to publicly “offer, announce, or advertise” abortion services. Breaking the law is punishable with a fine or up to two years in prison. [...]

Then, on Tuesday (Mar. 13), the Social Democrats—partners in the new coalition—suddenly did an about-face, announcing they didn’t want to put their proposal to strike the law to a vote, as they’d originally promised, but would seek a common solution with their conservative partners. They were slammed for giving in to the CDU before the new government even got off the ground. [...]

Abortion is still a crime in Germany and an “offence against life” under section 218 of the criminal code. However, a woman won’t be prosecuted if she has the abortion in the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, but she’s legally obliged to have a counseling session with a doctor and then have three days “thinking time” before she goes ahead with the procedure. She still has to pay for the abortion herself though, as medical insurance will normally only cover her if the pregnancy is deemed risky.

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Jacobin Magazine: No Corbyn in Sight

And indeed, the conference vote ended up being remarkably close, with only 56 percent of the assembled delegates endorsing the negotiations for a new “GroKo” — the German media’s awkward abbreviation for “große Koalition,” a grand coalition between the country’s two main parties, the CDU and SPD. But fifty-six percent is still fifty-six percent. Formal talks to assemble a grand coalition — the third in sixteen years — will soon be underway. [...]

An uninspired character, Schulz did his best on Sunday to play the part of the passionate statesman forced to join the government out of a sense of national duty, while at the same time insisting that he and his team had wrung substantial concessions from Merkel. The initial agreement between the SPD and CDU, which forms the basis of coalition negotiations, includes several noteworthy, arguably “Social Democratic” reforms. [...]

Schulz and company want their supporters to believe that these concessions are the result of hard bargaining, but the fact is, after two decades of neoliberal convergence, very little difference remains between the two major parties. As Oliver Nachtwey argued in the lead up to last year’s elections, Merkel largely abandoned fiscally conservative policies after taking government, and has since presided over a stable spending and social welfare policy that has even seen her overturn the most extreme of the SPD’s neoliberal reforms of the early 2000s. Tweaking a few details to appease the Social Democrats probably didn’t take much work. [...]

At the same time, this will not be a grand coalition like any other. Last year’s elections not only delivered humiliatingly low results for both of the major parties, but also witnessed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s meteoric rise. With the SPD back in government, the AfD will now be the largest opposition party in parliament, posing the very real danger that further hollowing out of the political center will benefit not the Left, but the radical right.

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