Lisa Leunter/AP Photo
From left, German Social Democratic Party candidates Franziska Giffey, Olaf Scholz, and Manuela Schwesig pose at the party’s headquarters in Berlin, September 27, 2021.
The next German government will likely be led by a Social Democrat for the first time since 2005. This is good news for Germany and for a social democratic movement that seemed on the verge of extinction.
But the necessary coalition politics precludes much change from the Merkel era. And that is not good news for the EU, whose member states need Germany to move beyond its traditional role as enforcer of austerity.
For the governing Christian Democrats, the election was a wipeout. The union of the CDU and their sister party in Bavaria, the CSU, saw their combined total of the popular vote fall from 33 percent in the last general election of 2017 to a sickening 24.1 percent, the worst showing of the postwar era.
But though the Social Democrats (SPD) placed first, receiving 25.7 percent of the popular vote this time, compared to 20.5 percent last time, polls showed that they gained mainly because their leader, Olaf Scholz, seemed more plausible as chancellor than his dismal CDU counterpart, Armin Laschet, not because of any popular swing to the left.
The far-left party, Die Linke, faced an even worse wipeout than the Christian Democrats, falling from 9.2 percent last time to just 4.9 percent of the vote, and was barely spared losing its seats in the Bundestag. On the other end of the spectrum, the neofascist AfD also experienced a decline, from 12.2 percent to 10.3 percent of the popular vote.
As the leading party, the SPD now gets the first shot at forming a coalition, and it will almost surely prevail. There is only one real possibility—a three-party coalition of the SPD, the Greens, and the free-market Free Democratic Party. Together, they have a comfortable majority of 394 seats in the incoming Bundestag (they need 368 for a majority).
Mathematically, there are two other possibilities. A grand coalition of the SPD and the CDU could govern, as it did for part of the Merkel era, this time with the SPD holding the chancellorship. But most politicians believe it’s time for the CDU to be out of government, especially after this kind of blowout loss. Mathematically, the Free Democrats and Greens could also be part of a government led by the CDU, but that’s even less likely.
The necessary coalition politics precludes much change from the Merkel era.
So the eventual government will be a coalition of SPD, Greens, and FDP. What could those three parties have in common?
One thing is that all three are “cultural left.” The FDP is libertarian in its economics, but also in its view of personal liberty and its opposition to authoritarianism.
And as free-market parties go, the FDP is not bad on the environment. So with the Greens in a national government, Germany will play a stronger role on climate change.
Where else is there common ground? On climate, Scholz wants to reduce Germany’s heavy dependence on fossil fuels for its electricity. German electricity is also very expensive, which translates into higher costs for German industry. Two decades ago, the German government, in a burst of green consciousness, decided to get rid of nuclear reactors, leaving more dependence on coal. The challenge is that Germany is a long way from having enough renewable sources for all its power needs.
Another challenge is that Scholz is committed to a Biden-style large public-investment program. But because of German deficit phobia, this will take tax increases. But the libertarian FDP is anti-tax.
A further source of division is labor policy. Scholz wants stronger unions and more protections for low-wage workers, and the FDP does not.
Europe sorely needs Germany to move beyond austerity economics. While some in the SPD support this, German public opinion as a whole is resistant to what is disparaged as a “debt union,” in which stronger economies take more responsibility for weaker ones. That’s fine within Germany, but not between Germany and Italy or Greece. In this respect, Scholz will not be that different from his predecessors.
With an SPD-led government in Berlin, Biden gets a closer ally. One very important area for closer coordination is China policy, where Germany, a major supplier of capital goods, had hoped it could continue to make trade deals with Beijing that benefited both nations. Germany may now accept the need for more of a common front.
In general, a government led by the SPD is a modest improvement over Merkel. But Sunday’s was emphatically a vote for the center-left—emphasis on center—not for drastic change.
