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.
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
A recent scandal involving a high-school student from a private school in Taichung has reignited long-standing frustrations with Taiwan’s increasingly complex and high-pressure university admissions system. The student, who had successfully gained admission to several prestigious medical schools, shared their learning portfolio on social media — only for Internet sleuths to quickly uncover a falsified claim of receiving a “Best Debater” award. The fallout was swift and unforgiving. National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and Taipei Medical University revoked the student’s admission on Wednesday. One day later, Chung Shan Medical University also announced it would cancel the student’s admission. China Medical
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
RSS