Coalition talks in Germany will forge the path ahead. Here’s what the parties need to tackle

Workers remove election campaign poster in Cologne, Germany, on Sept. 27. (Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters)
Workers remove election campaign poster in Cologne, Germany, on Sept. 27. (Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters)

Wafer-thin election victories are often a recipe for disaster. But things have remained pretty calm in Germany after Sunday’s election.

Germans know they’re in for a period of waiting and uncertainty. That’s because most main parties are still in the running, and indeed it is not even certain yet which of them will provide Chancellor Angela Merkel’s successor.

The Social Democrats (SPD) just edged ahead with 25.7 percent of the vote, marginally ahead of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, which fell to 24 percent, a historic low for the party. In the German voting system, however, the winner does not take it all. Germans don’t vote for their chancellor directly but instead, they elect parliamentarians and political parties. It is then up to those parties to form a working majority with others. It is entirely possible that the second-largest party could forge a coalition with two smaller groups to form a working majority and thereby send the largest party into opposition.

The coalition talks are highly complex affairs that will end in a formal treaty between the parties forming the new government. This may well take until after Christmas, and in the meantime, Merkel will continue to run the country as caretaker chancellor. While this means we will have to wait a while longer to see the definitive makeup of Germany’s post-Merkel setup, it is almost certain that it will contain three parties running the country in tandem.

A few things are certain, however. With Merkel’s departure, it will fall to one of the two main parties to provide a successor. This will either be Armin Laschet, who leads Merkel’s party, or the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, who has served as Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor as his party has run the country together with Merkel’s since 2013.

Neither of the two candidates is a revolutionary on a ticket of rapid change, but both understand that absolute continuity from Merkel’s middle-of-the-road politics is no longer tenable. Germans want change, but they also want the change to be handled well and securely.

Germany has a wealth of problems to solve after 16 years of Merkelism. In a survey taken Sunday, 42 percent of respondents said they worried about a decline in living standards. The same percentage feared that too many foreigners had entered the country, a perception harking back to the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis during which Merkel allowed around 1 million people into the country. Notably, only 7 percent said they voted on pandemic issues. Germans are clearly expecting solutions to structural social problems, not short-term issues.

Finding answers to fundamental questions affecting society and economics is going to be one of the main challenges during coalition negotiations. The Greens reached 14.8 percent and the Free Liberals (FDP) 11.5 percent, and both are likely to act as kingmakers and form the body of a coalition led by other big parties. Yet, they are fundamentally opposed on many baseline issues. The libertarian principles of the FDP are structurally at odds with the deep, state-driven changes the Greens want to make to decarbonize the German economy at a fast pace. There is no lowest common denominator and stagnation threatens unless one or the other makes significant concessions.

Similarly, Germany will have to make fundamental decisions about foreign policy after four terms of Merkelian indecision. China is currently Germany’s biggest trading partner, which has ruffled U.S. feathers given the increasing demands of intervention needed in the Pacific region to hem in Chinese political and economic expansion. Germany cannot ride the twin tigers of economic ties with China and security alliances with the West much longer.

Russo-German relations have also long worried Washington. The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is nearly complete and will form part of Germany’s ambition to become carbon neutral. The country’s last nuclear reactors will be closed next year and its coal production phased out by the end of the 2030s. This leaves Germany entirely reliant on top-ups from Russia to supplement unreliable renewables. Moscow will be in a position to control German energy supplies at the touch of a button.

Neither Laschet nor Scholz has committed to a policy regarding Germany’s economic ties to the eastern giants of Russia and China beyond vague phrases about being principled and firm. Nor have they formulated a greater vision for Germany’s domestic problems. With tough coalition talks in mind, all parties have remained vague and noncommittal on tax reforms, social care and the cost of living so as not to block their paths to power by alienating potential future allies.

The real decisions on the future of Europe’s largest democracy weren’t made on the campaign trail or at the ballot box last night. They are yet to be hammered out during acrimonious coalition talks in the months ahead. The future of post-Merkel Germany still hangs in the balance.

Katja Hoyer, an Anglo-German historian and journalist, is the author of “Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918.”

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