Germany is about to get a new fitness trainer. So declared Bavarian Minister-President Markus Soder, one of the political leaders who have just announced a coalition agreement. In one of the quirks of the country’s constitution, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) would play a significant role in the new administration and Soder used his moment in the limelight to play the entertainer.
It was a curious way to announce the arrival of a new government, expected to be sworn in during the first week of next month. Since the elections on Feb. 23, Germany has been in limbo for two and a half months, and all while US President Donald Trump rampages across the world.
The circumstances could not be more inauspicious. CSU leader Friedrich Merz, who is set to be the new German chancellor, must deal with an out-of-control US, Russia taking advantage of the mayhem by feigning interest in a peace deal while making further military inroads in Ukraine and China increasing influence as anti-US sentiment increases. Domestically, Germany’s economy, already stuttering, faces 20 percent US tariffs imposed across the EU, plus further punitive levies on its all-important auto industry. To compound it all, a few hours before the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union of Bavaria and the Social Democrats (SPD) took to the stage to seal their deal, an opinion poll put the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the lead for the first time.
All of that would concentrate minds. Germany and Europe cannot afford a repeat of the last coalition, which foundered amid acrimony and under the lackluster leadership of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The stakes were high then; they are stratospherically higher now.
“Germany is getting a government that is capable of action and is strong,” Merz said.
“We will govern well together,” he added, as he looked smilingly towards the SPD leader and probable next German deputy chancellor and minister of finance, Lars Klingbeil. It is an unlikely “bromance,” but they would have to get on. As both pointed out, the “political center,” as Germans call mainstream parties, must show it can work. Otherwise the AfD is waiting in the wings for the next election, due by 2029 at the latest.
During the negotiations, which were carried out with little turbulence and few leaks, Merz was accused by party hardliners of giving away too much to the SPD. The result, as set out in the coalition agreement, is a necessary compromise, which leaves all sides feeling they have won some and yielded some.
Merz has secured tougher immigration controls — checks at borders, no family for the first two years, and five years rather than three for citizenship applications. Corporation tax would be reduced. Rules about the minimum income guarantee would be tightened. Klingbeil and his team have preserved increases to the minimum wage and other welfare measures.
All parties were agreed on their approach to Ukraine and Russia. The introduction of a national security council within the chancellery to deal with the many emergencies the country faces is a welcome, if belated, move. Some form of national military service would be reintroduced, but it is expected to be opt-in, with benefits for participants, rather than compulsory. The climate crisis barely got a mention.
Everyone is talking the talk about modernization and removing bureaucracy. A new digitization ministry is designed to kickstart Germany’s lamentable digital provision. Would that analogue and cash-based society finally join the modern world?
As ever in modern Germany, gloom has enveloped the country. Some of it is understandable — a country that craves stability is having to come to terms with a world more on edge than at any time since the formation of the country in 1949. Yet much of it is self-indulgent. Having just voted in a general election, with the highest turnout since reunification in 1990, and having ensured a relatively stable two-party coalition (the CSU is not seen as a separate entity), Germans have turned on Merz before he has even been given the seals of office.
His biggest “crime” was forcing constitutional changes through the outgoing parliament rather than waiting for the new one to be formed. He knew he had to do this, as the far right and radical left would have voted the changes down. In so doing, he has paved the way for an injection of more spending on defense and an injection of 500 billion euros (US$568 billion) to tackle the country’s ailing infrastructure.
Merz used unprincipled means for principled ends, and he, the SPD and the Greens, should be lauded for pushing it through.
Even in these desperately difficult times and despite its fraught beginnings, that coalition could work. Merz and Klingbeil seem to work well; popular German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius is expected to stay in his job, providing much-needed stability.
Under Scholz, Germany was absent without leave. The EU was rudderless. The economy atrophied. Just more than two months after the last government took over, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and all the parties’ preparations were torn apart. This time, darkness has descended even before the work has begun. There would be no honeymoon for Merz, no “first 100 days.” It is hard to imagine an accession as fraught as this one.
This will be the last time anyone cracks jokes.
John Kampfner is the author of In Search of Berlin, Blair’s Wars and Why the Germans Do It Better.
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