Germany’s watershed election

This is the English version of the Europe Express Weekend Newsletter. You can find a German-language version Here,

Welcome – Herzlich Villakmen Zurkak!

Three trends, a source of severe concern for each German, creates a background for Sunday’s Bundestag elections: an indefinite, even the threat to the international approach; A stressful, divided home political view; And an economy, while in many cases strong, is stuck in doldrums.

Whatever parties form the next government – my hump is that Christian Democrats of Frederick Merz will rule in a alliance or both or both Olaf Sholaz’s social democrats and greens – further works will be malicious. I am on tony.barber@ft.com.

Return of history

This week, I reflected myself on Germany, finding that I knew about the last years in the power of reunion and Helmut Kohl, around the time of the collapse of the Berlin wall, who is the CDU leader, who is a CDU leader, from 1982 to 1998 Used to organize Chancellorships.

In August 1990, Kohl gave a speech to Bundestag to celebrate the integration of West and East two months later. It is going to read today (here in German).

In his speech, Kohl paid special tribute to “our American friends”, who ensured the safety of the federal Republic during the Cold War and then assisted the reunion. He also thanked the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose dramatic changes of 1989–1990 in Germany and in Central and Eastern Europe, without reformist policies.

Later in the 1990s, Kohl often said that, since the first time Germany became a united nation-state in 1871, it was now “surrounded by friends and partners”.

American dysdan

Germany’s European neighbors are still friends and partners, even though political trends in France, Austria and parts of Central and Eastern Europe give rise to anxiety in Berlin. But the far more concern is that Vladimir Putin’s opposition to Russia and, above these, over the US under the Trump administration.

American Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk and other Trump Associates in Washington treated Germany openly. They express support for the option for Germany (AFD), which is a distant party, with unavoidable American support against liberal democracy created in West Germany after 1945.

On Tuesday, former Italian Premier Enrico Lata saw:

“Among all the negative things coming from Trump, Musk and Vance, it was the worst to support AFD.”

AFD generalization

To do justice to the latest referendum surveys, it does not seem that the AFD tilt of the Trump administration and contempt for liberal parties have had great impact.

Voting continued to show the CDU with a sufficient lead at about 30 percent of the votes, and in second place with AFD, but more than 20 percent of the headway.

Nevertheless, this will be the best result of AFD in a Bundestag election. In addition, the party stands on the electoral scenario of Germany because due to its strength in the five eastern Länder of the country, as the YouGov map below shows:

Compared to the Bundestag elections of 2017 and 2021, a notable feature of this campaign is that AFD and Ellis Vedel, its Chancellor candidate (profiles here in FT), appears to be a common part of the political scene.

Last Sunday, in a television debate, Merz, Scools and Greens candidate Robert Habek set their fire on Vel. He challenged him about his party’s supporter Russian inclination and its extremism (last year a German court stated that the domestic intelligence agency was justified to the AFD nominating a suspected extreme writing organization).

Vedel did not come out well from these exchanges – but will it be on Sunday? Marina Korambaki, Der Speigel for the magazine (here in German) wrote an important aspect of debate:

“The very fact is that Vedel appears at prime time with the candidates who have the most promising possibility of becoming a Chancellor, argue with them and finally shakes hands with them all, it sends the feeling that The AFD is there and there is a party like a party. Others. “

A separate party landscape

We should keep the growth of AFD in context. It is part of a broader picture of a fast luxurious party landscape in Germany.

In 2021, the CDU fell into its lowest part of the vote, 24.1 percent, since the construction of the Federal Republic in 1949. This time, it is SPD – currently voting at about 16 percent – which is for its worst time results.

For decades, both these sides and Liberal Free Democrats dominated the scene, even after the arrival of Greens in the 1980s. It is since reunion that the picture has actually changed.

First the radical leftist dye linke, then AFD came. Finally, last year, Sahara wagonachet looked at the emergence of the Alliance (BSW), which combines left-to-surprise economic views with emphasizing hostility for national identity, culture and immigration. This last issue has become a major election subject after three violent incidents involving migrants in Germany.

Eastern impact

The eastern Länder of AFD, Die Linke and BSW has strong roots, depiction (as I suggested in this newspaper in November) that, 35 years, the political, social and economic impact of the reunion shapes the party system of Germany, the political, social and economic impact of the Germany. .

We do not know that all the seven parties mentioned above will pass 5 percent of the vote limit required to get Bundestag seats. Writing for the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies, Valentin Creylinger says:

“The public opinion is unstable. However, it is clear that forming a stable government in a fragmented party system after the polarized election campaign would be a difficult task. ,

If all seven parties make safe seats, the next government may know that it will be extremely complicated to adopt a very essential economic reform especially with the political fragmentation of Germany.

This is the abandonment of constitutionally inherent “debt brake”, who see the German economy as a priority to move forward again.

Stuck in parking

Before I turned to debt brakes, some words on the overall position of the German economy. Over the years, hard-touching comments have become common. The Chief German economist Andreas Reece in Unicredett Bank, observation:

“Recently unhealthy auto industry is exemplary by the major region of Germany. China was killed by a mixture of technological changes, weak demand and fierce competition, German car growers switching from the passing lane to the parking lot. ,

Similarly, in this analysis for the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Marco Siddi, Tuomas Iso-Marku, Manual Muller and Nickels Helvig make some trench points:

“Domesticly, in public infrastructure, two decades of under-investment, such as railway networks and educational institutions, as well as slow progress in digitization, weighing on the current situation of the country. Limited innovation capacity and dull productivity growth also play a role. ,

However, the risk of painting the picture is very black. In this extended comment, my FT colleague Tej Parikh explains that, while other traditional areas of car industry and manufacturing power are in difficulty, “German industry is well kept for price construction, being highly competitive in many development areas Nate “.

Improvement in ‘loan brake’

He said, the loan break needs to go. The banking sector and public loans of the Western world were passed as a constitutional amendment in 2009 in an attempt to show Germany’s insistence at the fiscal discretion during the Emergency, it was limited to 0.35 percent of the structural deficit of the federal government in general time to 0.35 percent of GDP Does.

This is one of the reasons that, an economist at the IFO institute of Munich, as Timo Volmershar:

“Germany is experiencing the longest stagnation of its later history.”

The difficulty will be contained in politics – in particular, the creation of the next Bundestag. A two-thirds majority in the legislature will require a two-thirds majority to modify or leave the loan brake.

Explain the Andrejaz Szespeniaq and his colleagues at Nomura Bank:

“The ability to achieve any improvement on the line will largely depend on what extent the small parties qualify, and thus enter Parliament, and the extent to which we to CDU/CSU dissatisfaction Let’s see. “

In this regard, it is notable that, unlike SPD and Greens, Merz has to retreat from creating a clear commitment to get rid of debt brakes.

I am not worried that the work of increasing spending on defense, infrastructure and other sectors of the economy can be delayed due to Sunday election results.

More on this subject

AFD has strong roots in the eastern states of Germany, but it is also attracting more support in the West, in a national context marked by serious political and economic polarization, Valerie Dubslf writes for the French Institute of International Relations

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