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Denmark’s Social Democrats are expected to form the next government following Wednesday’s parliamentary elections, after winning 26 percent of the vote. Their leader, Mette Frederiksen, campaigned on a platform of more investment in welfare and healthcare, strong action on climate change—and a much harder line on immigration than previous Social Democrat governments.

The liberal, center-right party of Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Venstre, came second with 23 percent. “We had a really good election, but there will be a change of government,” Løkke said, conceding defeat.

Meanwhile, support for the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), which had supported Løkke’s government, plummeted to 8.7 percent from 21.1 percent in 2015, largely because mainstream parties have adopted much of their harsh “foreigner policy.”

No Hygge In Sight

The harsh approach to immigration can be a bit of a jolt for foreign observers of Danish politics. One could be forgiven for thinking that all that hype about hygge (a unique kind of coziness and togetherness supposedly involving candles and cups of tea) a few years ago was a deliberately orchestrated smoke-screen covering some rather un-cozy truths about the situation in Denmark.

The run-up to the election was quite circus-like, with 13 different parties, some of them extreme or peculiar, vying for seats in parliament. And the debate isn’t that hyggelig at all. Danish politics has become a talent show where candidates compete to outdo one another in dreaming up new anti-immigration policies.

About three years ago, the center-left underwent a sea change. In a Facebook post on July 27, 2016, Frederiksen wrote that the popularity of Donald Trump, who had yet to be elected US president, had led her to change her thinking: “We must admit that the people he is talking to feel for the first time that there is a voice that speaks to their fears and frustrations.”

She seemed to be referring to the white working class, which is allegedly under pressure from globalization and immigration, those “deplorables” who seem to have been courted by Trump and other populists across the Western world. Of course, this came on the heels of the 2015 “refugee crisis,” when about 20,000 of the roughly one million Syrians and other refugees who came to Europe made it to Denmark. Instead of triggering empathy for the actual refugees, images of Arab families walking along a Danish highway seemed to have struck fear in the hearts of many Danes and drove more of them into the arms of the far-right.

Social-Democratic Rethink

Out of this fertile soil grew the Social Democratic re-think. In an article titled “Realistic and fair immigration” published earlier this year in the magazine International Politics and Society, Fredericksen outlined an “immigration policy to unite Denmark,” which comprised three main pillars.

First, severely limit the number the “non-Western immigrants” (meaning Muslim or dark-skinned people) allowed into Denmark. Only a few UN refugees should be let in, if any at all. Second, devote resources to fighting the causes of immigration, meaning more development aid for the countries. Third, prevent what the Danes call “ghettos” from forming—neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants and social problems.

She wrote, “A 10-year plan must be applied to ensure that no residential areas, schools or educational institutions have more than 30 percent non-Western immigrants and descendants in future. And more have to contribute to Danish society. That is why we want to introduce an obligation for all immigrants on integration benefits and cash benefits to contribute 37 hours a week.”

In fact, much of this corresponds more or less with the previous center-right government’s policies. After the arrival of so many refugees in 2015, Denmark instated border checks and stopped even taking the 500 “quota” refugees per year selected by the United Nations that it had been accepting since 1989. The total number of asylum applications accepted dropped from about 12,000 in 2016 to 1,600 in 2018, and most of these aren’t recent arrivals, but people who have been stuck in bureaucratic limbo for years.

“Ghetto Deal”

Then there’s the “ghetto deal” which was reached between Venstre and the Social Democrats. It is meant to tackle the problem of integration with measures specifically targeting areas with a large number of ethnic minorities. Critics say it piles another layer of discrimination upon people already suffering from discrimination and stigmatizes whole segments of the population.

Immigrant rights advocate Michala Clante Bendixen wrote on her website refugees.dk in February 2019: “The deal gives double sentences for crimes committed in the area, residents are excluded from family reunification, and the bilingual children lose their children’s benefit if they are not enrolled in a nursery from the age of one. These rules are especially targeting ethnic minorities.”

The idea is that the little Mohammads and Aishahs growing up in these places should be turned into proper Danes with proper Danish values. This means more than just decorating birthday cakes with Danish flags—it also means things like valuing gender equality and so on. But critics say a lot of this is merely “symbolic politics,” pointing to the fact that the vast majority of immigrant children in those neighborhoods already visit daycare from an early age.

Broad Support

This harder line on immigration is supported by 75 percent of the population, says Arne Hardis, a political writer for the weekly broadsheet Weekendavisen. “If you want to be in government in Denmark you have to have a strong immigration policy and you have to have a strong welfare state. And these two things go very well together. The fewer foreigners, the more for us. It’s very simple. We have very high costs for welfare for foreigners—30-35 billion kroner (€4-4.7 billion) a year.”

Despite the already harsh line on immigrants, two populist forces to the right of the Danish People’s Party with more extreme ideas about foreigners emerged before the election: Nye Borgerlige (New Right) and Stram Kurs (Hard Line). The latter is led by Rasmus Paludan, a lawyer who incited riots this spring by publicly burning the Quran and who advocates the deportation of all Muslims from Denmark.

Both of these groups have siphoned support away from the original anti-immigration camp, the Danish People’s Party, who suffered a huge loss of support already in this year’s European elections on May 26. Paludan’s appearance out of nowhere serves as a memo to the center left and right that they’d better stay tough on immigration or else Denmark’s ugly, racist underbelly will rise to the surface and cause havoc. Nye Borgerlige scraped by with 2 percent of the vote and will occupy 4 seats in the new parliament. Rabble-rouser Paludan didn’t make it past the 2 percent hurdle.

Minority Government

Now the Social Democrats leader Frederiksen is expected to form a minority government that would allow her to work with the four smaller socialist and progressive parties in parliament on issues like welfare and the environment, while securing the right’s support on immigration issues.

She will have to perform a delicate balancing act. To placate the left, she might have to throw them a bone or two such as scrapping the previous government’s controversial plans (originally cooked up by the Danish People’s Party) to send asylum seekers convicted of crimes to a remote island or perhaps devoting more resources to improving the lives of traumatized refugee children growing up in depressing refugee centers (this has been a point of fierce debate on Danish TV). Or perhaps these potential allies will be pacified by a stronger climate policy or investments in social programs.

If the smaller left-wing parties don’t cooperate, she might threaten to form a centrist coalition with Venstre, possibly with the support of the Radikale, a liberal center-left party who were able to grow their share of the vote to 8 percent and have been known to flirt with the center-right.

Whatever the constellation, it seems clear that 41-year-old Frederiksen will be prime minister and stick to a policy that has worked for her party. On election night, as she celebrated the party’s results she said: “Voters who have deserted us over recent years, who thought our immigration policy was wrong, have come back this time, that is what many have told me.”

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© REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

The Petersberg Climate Dialogue is one of those annual climate conferences one doesn’t expect much from. Thirty-five countries get together and dive into the technical nitty-gritty of international climate policy. Most journalists don’t have the patience or interest to follow the minutiae.

This year, however, Angela Merkel said something interesting at the conference. For the first time she brought up the idea of achieving “net zero” greenhouse emissions by 2050: “The discussion shouldn’t be whether we can reach it, but how we can achieve it.”

The term “net zero” doesn’t mean we would have to completely give up burning fossil fuels by then—but we would have to offset the remaining emissions via reforestation or carbon sequestration projects by which CO2 is captured from the air and stored underground. This was the first time that Merkel had clearly expressed that she was in tune with French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan for the European Union to achieve “net zero” by 2050. Until recently, she had been dithering with the vague target of “80-95 percent net reduction” in emissions by mid-century. For those frustrated with Germany’s sluggish progress on climate policy, this sounds like progress.

Reacting to Climate Protests

The latest outburst of climate ambition also tells us that the Fridays for Future demonstrations are having an impact. Merkel openly said she felt the pressure of thousands of children skipping school to protest climate change once a week.

Cynics would say that Merkel is just surfing the Zeitgeist as she always has. Who can forget her sudden U-turn on nuclear power following the Fukushima accident in 2011 when she impulsively decided to shut down all reactors in Germany by 2022, even faster than the preceding SPD-Green government had planned to do? That very decision made recent negotiations to phase out climate-ravaging brown coal plants even tougher: shutting down both nuclear and coal at more or less the same time is a huge challenge.

The imperfect plan requires increased imports of Russian natural gas and even faster expansion of wind farms, which come with their own host of problems, including protests from local residents. The painful truth is that Germany’s per head carbon emissions would be lower if the country had waited longer to phase out nuclear. Despite all of these missteps, Merkel does seem determined to leave behind a legacy of climate action when she finally leaves office.

Ruffling Feathers in the CDU

However, this latest expression of green verve is going to ruffle feathers in Merkel’s own party, the Christian Democrats (CDU). While most Germans might welcome Merkel’s attempt to tackle what is probably the single greatest problem facing humanity, the CDU under the new leadership of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer appears to be more concerned by the bleeding of votes to the populist AfD to the right.

In the run-up to next week’s European elections, Kramp-Karrenbauer rejected calls for a CO2 tax—echoed by Manfred Weber, the conservatives’ Spitzenkandidat who is in the running to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. Environment Minister Svenja Schulze, a member of the CDU’s coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), had brought up the specter of a new tax as a way of encouraging people to reduce their CO2 emissions.

Kramp-Karrenbauer warned against Germany “going it alone” and stressed that a European solution was needed. Any solo national solution—new taxes, regulations—could harm German industry and jobs. Fair enough. And yet, when actual European solutions are proposed, such as, for example, stricter regulations designed to reduce car emissions, Germany usually steps in and makes sure the rules get watered down at the EU level.

Sense of Common Purpose

The complex reality of international climate policy demands both national  and international solutions. Whining about how Germany is only responsible for 3 percent of global emissions, as those on the right of the spectrum routinely do, doesn’t really absolve a single country. Germany happens to be the most powerful, richest, and most populous country in the EU. Leading by example doesn’t hurt if you want Europe to achieve something as a bloc.

A united net zero policy could give the embattled EU a renewed sense of common purpose—a European version of the Green New Deal that could really contribute to creating a cleaner, safer future for humanity. The continent carries a special historical responsibility. Europe was, after all, the place where people began to burn coal on an industrial scale in the 19th century.

Interestingly, climate change has become a decisive issue for voters. According to a YouGov poll this month, the environment has overtaken migration as the biggest European policy issue for Germans. Political parties are well aware of this. The Greens, SPD, and far-left Linke are aggressively calling for more climate protection in their European election campaigns. Even the CDU/CSU pay lip service to sustainability and renewable energy in their manifesto.

Climate Rebels

Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of history. Except for the AfD, which is delighted to play the role of climate rebel, now that migration has faded as an issue that can rally voters. The populists have switched their main focus from Islamophobia to shamelessly promoting conspiracy theories about Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg and ranting about the “climate cult.”

Merkel is largely unperturbed by the populist noise. During her first term, in 2007, she posed in front of an iceberg to show the effects of global warming. And it was her who successfully corralled reluctant European nations, including the Russian petro-state, to sign up to the 2015 Paris Agreement, which committed its signatories to make efforts to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius.

But recently Merkel has largely been preoccupied with the euro and then refugee crises. Then came the embarrassing “Dieselgate” scandal, which exposed the inherent corruption of automakers, not to mention German hypocrisy on the environment. Merkel and her transport minister Andreas Scheuer did all they could to protect the country’s key industry.

With her new commitment to “net zero,” an overhaul of the business model of selling large petrol-fuelled cars is unavoidable. The German brands keep cranking out CO2-belching SUVs as if there were no tomorrow. If Merkel wishes to leave behind a strong climate protection law as part of her legacy, a serious confrontation with many from her own  party and industry will have to take place.

It will be interesting to see if Merkel, by nature a non-confrontational politician, can summon the stamina to push through her upgraded climate agenda.

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During Angela Merkel’s 2019 New Year’s video address, images of brown, drought-stricken fields shot by German astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station were faded in to remind viewers of “the vulnerability of the basis for life.” Climate change was a Schicksalsfrage, a question of fate, Merkel exclaimed. An issue that demanded bold international action.

A few weeks later, it looked as if Germany might actually be doing its part. On January 26, the government-appointed coal commission—consisting of 28 representatives of government, unions, industry, and environmental NGOs—presented its plan to phase out coal by 2038. Though the commission’s plan still needs to be enshrined in law, it was lauded far and wide for taking all interests into account. While taking a major step towards climate change mitigation, it also foresees spending €2 billion per year for the next two decades to cope with the loss of coal mining jobs in affected regions. Patrick Graichen, the director of think-tank Agora Energiewende, said it “showed that large social conflicts can still be solved together in Germany. It is therefore a great moment for our political system.”

The “coal consensus” is a late success for Merkel’s climate policy. Too little, too late, perhaps: even if the new deal is fully implemented, Germany will only meet its own 2020 emissions targets by 2025, according to Agora Energiewende. A vast amount of work has yet to be undertaken by the country if it is to fulfil its commitments under the Paris agreement. And the debate about coal has raised questions about Merkel’s climate legacy.

Noble Words

Judging only by her words, one could be forgiven for mistaking Merkel for a veritable climate warrior. She has been grappling—at least rhetorically—with climate change since the beginning of her political career. As environment minister under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, she presided over the first UN climate conference (COP1) in Berlin in 1995. At the time, she wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung: “With good reason, it is expected from governments and politicians that they no longer close their eyes to the pressing scientific findings that climate protection requires rapid and vigorous action.”

Ever since, Merkel has hammered home that message at international summits, earning her the nickname “climate chancellor.” At the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2007, for example, she persuaded oil-loving US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept the latest IPCC report recommending emissions cuts to prevent the earth from warming by more than between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. At the 2015 Paris UN Climate Change Conference, Merkel was credited with working tirelessly behind the scenes and getting skeptical leaders such as Putin on board with the final agreement.

Missed Targets, Tarnished Reputation

In late 2018, the government announced it would miss its own 2020 emissions targets. Instead of the 40-percent reduction of greenhouse gases over 1990 levels that had been its initial target, Germany would only achieve a 32-percent drop. Emissions had stagnated at 11 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per inhabitant, higher than the EU average of 8.4 tons. In a report in December, the government blamed unexpected growth, both of the population and the economy, for the lack of progress. Having given up on trying to reach the 2020 target, the government said it would concentrate on meeting its 2030 goal of a 55-percent reduction over 1990 levels.

Why isn’t Germany meeting its targets? For one, the Energiewende, or energy transition, set in motion by Gerhard Schröder’s SPD-Greens coalition, is running out of steam. It was once the world’s most ambitious renewable energy program. Germany’s renewable energy feed-in tariffs were copied the world over and sparked a wave of innovation in wind and solar technology at home, with some impressive results: renewables now account for 40 percent of German electricity, up from 10 percent when Merkel took office in 2005.

However, Germany is not committing to the investments necessary to make the Energiewende sustainable in the long term. From 2021, subsidies for wind and solar energy will end completely. Over the past few years, the number of new wind turbines installed on land has dropped radically due to new restrictions on their size and location and political resistance at the local, state and federal levels. The result has been job losses in what was once lauded as one of Germany’s most innovative industries. The systems that store power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, as well as the high-capacity “electricity autobahns” to transport power from the wind farms of the North Sea to the industrial south, have not received enough government support, a deficit some critics blame on Merkel’s Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, who is not a big fan of the Energiewende.

Merkel’s about-face on nuclear power also played an important role. Upon becoming chancellor, Merkel moved to “phase out the phase-out” of nuclear power set in motion by her predecessor. But following the 2011 Fukushima accident she abruptly reversed course and decided to shut down all nuclear plants by 2022, even faster than under the previous government’s plan. Since nuclear power was CO2-free and provided the baseload electricity required by German industry, massive continued investment is required in renewable sources as well as in relatively clean gas plants. But this has yet to occur to a sufficient degree. As nuclear plants have been taken offline in recent years, the baseload has been increasingly covered by lignite or brown coal.

Slow Retreat from Coal

Under the new “coal consensus,” lignite will be mined and burned for another 19 years. Lignite emits more CO2 than virtually any other fuel. Open-cast lignite mines bring with them huge environmental and social costs, from sinking ground water to the destruction of villages and the forced relocation of tens of thousands of people. For a “climate chancellor,” Merkel has had a very friendly relationship with the coal industry. In 2006 she even laid the first stone of a brand new RWE lignite power plant in the western town of Neurath.

As the coal commission convened last year, environmentalists stepped up their anti-coal activism. In the Rhine region there were massive protests against the planned clearance of the Hambach Forest for the expansion of a lignite mine. Since the fall, German high school students, inspired by Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, have been staging “school strikes for the climate.” On a cold January Friday, about 10,000 Berlin teens skipped school to protest outside the building where the coal commission was holding its final meeting.

Under the commission’s proposals, all coal plants would be closed by 2038. €2 billion per year or a total of €40 billion over 20 years would be invested in coal regions. Utilities would receive billions in compensation. Altmaier said the plan would result in a 55-percent drop in emissions by 2030 over 1990 levels. New subsidies would keep consumer energy prices affordable. Both industry and unions welcomed the deal.

But not all are happy. Greenpeace Germany director Martin Kaiser, who took part in the negotiations, said that under the plan, Germany aimed to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, while the Paris agreement stipulates a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius. “This won’t be achieved by a step-by-step phase-out of coal-powered plants by 2038,” said Kaiser. For Germany to be in line with Paris, emissions must be reduced by 70 percent by 2030, not 55 percent.

Karen Pittel of the ifo Center for Energy, Climate and Resources said “the compensation for power plant operators and the planned relief funds for electricity prices would cause the cost of the coal phase-out to rise further.  A chance for fundamental reform of energy and climate policy has been missed.” The phase-out would make the Energiewende—which, according to Pittel, will already cost €1 trillion by 2050—even more expensive.

Too little, too late, too expensive. But perhaps better late than never in an era when the likes of US President Trump sing the praises of “beautiful clean coal.”

Cars Are King

The area where Merkel will find it hardest to make progress is transportation, Germany’s “problem child,” at least in terms of climate change and pollution. Road transport emissions in the EU have risen by more than 20 percent since 1990. And in Germany itself, the car industry employs a million people and enjoys an annual turnover of more than €400 billion. Over the past two decades German automakers pushed “clean diesel” as the way to reduce CO2 from cars rather than investing in alternative fuels and electric motors. Indeed, diesel is taxed at lower rates than gasoline, encouraging the purchase of diesel-guzzling SUVs and negating the positive impact of diesel’s lower CO2 emissions. The “Dieselgate” scandal—in which Volkswagen and other German carmakers were found to have installed illegal software in diesel cars to keep emissions artificially low during testing—laid bare the lie of “clean diesel” in 2015.

Nevertheless, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer still goes to great lengths to protect the car industry, even questioning the validity of EU air quality standards because of a critical paper signed by German lung specialists. When a transport commission tasked with devising ways to reduce CO2 emissions proposed a speed limit of 130 kilometers per hour on the autobahn, Scheuer criticized it as going “against common sense.” That put him at odds with the 63 percent of Germans who favor a speed limit, according to a survey published by by DIE WELT newspaper in January. Scheuer was once again speaking the language of the car giants. Unsurprising in a country with a powerful auto lobby and in which senior politicians in the CDU/CSU and SPD have been known to take on lucrative jobs in the industry upon leaving office.

Another effort to clean up transportation—putting a million electric cars on German roads by 2020—will fail miserably. In 2018, a total of 100,000 electric and hybrid plug-ins were registered in a country with 46 million cars.  Merkel’s governments simply have not invested enough in charging stations or committed to the necessary financial incentives to boost sales in electric models. As countries around Europe name end dates for the sale of combustion engines, Germany hangs on to gasoline and diesel, protecting its flagship industry in the short-term and yet risking its future.

Now What?

A so-called climate protection law being pushed by Environment Minister Svenja Schulze is supposed to be passed this year. The law will bundle a series of measures, ensuring Germany’s emissions will be lowered to achieve the government’s goal of a 55-percent CO2 reduction by 2030 compared to 1990s levels. Meanwhile, as Germany simultaneously phases out coal and nuclear energy, it will have to produce a lot more electricity through renewable sources and “back-up” natural gas plants. No one really knows how much power a full transition to electro-mobility would require. One estimate puts it at 120 terawatt hours, requiring the equivalent of 20 new gas-fired power stations. Other problems that could nullify German climate efforts are the rapid growth of air travel and electricity used for IT.

According to a 2018 Hamburg University study, “climate change is an important factor in the voting behavior of about 40 percent of Germans.” It is perhaps no surprise that the Greens, who have the most aggressive climate policy of any party, are enjoying record support, polling at about 20 percent. The next government could very well be a CDU-Greens coalition, creating a chance to take more radical but necessary steps toward fulfilling the targets of the Paris accord and ending a decade and a half of Merkel’s wishy-washy approach to climate change.

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