© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Klaus Wowereit, Berlin’s partying ex-mayor, was once asked what kind of champagne he preferred. His reply: “The free kind.”

In the spring of 2018, with that in mind, I made a wager with a member of Angela Merkel’s government that her fourth administration would not run its full term. The government member, out of a sense of loyalty, insisted it would last until 2021. In the spirit of fun, we agreed a bottle of champagne for whoever was proved right. As Germany’s federal government limps into its second summer break, my inner Klaus Wowereit is already licking his lips.

On August 1, 2019, Merkel will have been chancellor for 5,000 days. The question hanging over political Berlin this summer is: how many more? The German leader has pledged to honor her promise to voters and complete her fourth term. That would see her pull equal with her mentor, Helmut Kohl.

But just two years after his death, Germany’s unity chancellor would no longer recognize the political landscape his former protégée inhabits in Berlin. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is losing support. Its Social Democrat (SPD) grand coalition partner is now as weak in polls as the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is strong. As another sweltering summer looms, furious young Germans have forced climate change onto the political—and their voting parents’—agenda. That has buoyed the Green Party in some polls into first place among Germany’s political parties.

While Germany concedes it will miss its climate goals for 2020, its energy transition—going nuclear power-free in the following year—is still not certain. Meanwhile the climate in German cities is heating up thanks to a spiraling housing crisis. Digitalization is no longer a buzzword for German political speeches, but an existential threat to the country’s economic backbone, the automotive industry. Directly and indirectly, this industry is said to employ every seventh German, but so far, the industry’s e-mobility efforts pale compared to the time, money, and energy expended in covering its tracks on the diesel emissions fraud.

Europe’s Center Holds, For Now

The European elections saw the political mainstream hold its nerve—and lead—over the continent’s nationalist, populist challengers. But post-poll squabbling over the EU top jobs in Brussels and Frankfurt raises questions about how much energy will remain for real reform.

A year before Germany takes over the rotating presidency of the EU, Paris has lost patience with its most important ally and is looking for more pro-active partners. Meanwhile, the German chancellor has rebuffed repeated attempts by her colleagues to convince her to swap Berlin for Brussels, and bring some stability to the bloc both internally and externally as the relationships with both Russia and the United States become increasingly tense. After almost 14 years living a punishing schedule, she knows her physical limits. And, after a trembling spell in public in June, so, too, does everyone else.

So far the succession blueprint she put in place last December is not going to plan. Seven months after handing over the CDU chair to her preferred candidate, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, their unprecedented job-share has hit some bumps.

AKK, as she’s known here, has slipped—in just six months—from second most-popular politician in Germany to 11th place. Meanwhile the CDU has slid by up to nine points from its 2017 election result that already marked a historic low. Kramp-Karrenbauer was tetchy in her reaction to a blue-haired YouTuber who tore strips off CDU policy. She now admits she faces a busy summer recalibrating party policy, in particular on the climate front. She also has to decide whether having two power centers—her CDU headquarters and Merkel’s chancellery—are helping or hindering her efforts to lead.

But the question the two women leaders insist they will agree in a conciliatory fashion may be answered for them. Whenever the CDU leader or the chancellor look over their shoulder, they see Berlin’s equivalent to Banquo, the ghost in Macbeth: Friedrich Merz, a Merkel ally-turned-nemesis. He lost out on the CDU top job last December but remains the favorite of the CDU’s influential conservative camp. His regular media and public appearances, purring his loyalty to AKK, have the air of someone biding his time.

Transitioning Out of the Merkel Era

As political Berlin departs for a summer of discontent, the ripe whiff of stagnation is hanging over the German capital. On the domestic front, the coalition has delivered on many promises: lower healthcare premiums; €5 billion for kindergartens; an immigration law; worker-friendly labor reforms. But you know things are bad when coalition officials, at their summer garden parties, berate their guests that “the government isn’t as bad as its reputation,” and party spin-doctors insist that “nobody wants elections.”

There’s some truth in the latter statement. The CDU is unsure if its new leader is its ideal election candidate, while the SPD fears a wipeout. The Greens are struggling to build capacity commensurate to its new popularity, while the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Left party are both stuck in the polls at just below their 2017 election results. Only the far-right AfD is keen, already anticipating poll triumphs in three autumn elections in eastern Germany.

And if, as expected, the CDU and SPD are hammered by voters in Saxony and Brandenburg on September 1, and later in Thuringia, the future of Berlin’s ruling coalition is looking anything but grand.

The post Berlin’s Stagnant Summer appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

If Brexit means Brexit, as we have heard from London for nearly two years, then a hard Brexit means a hard Brexit. And, by extension, a hard Brexit means a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which has been part of the United Kingdom since Irish partition in 1921.

This could mean political and economic disaster for the Republic, which will remain part of the 27-member European Union after the UK’s departure in March. Dublin has flagged the closely interlinked all-Ireland economy, and the North’s fragile peace process, to secure a guarantee—a so-called backstop—that would keep Northern Ireland in closer alignment with the EU than the rest of the UK, unless some other solution is found to keep the border open.

So much for the political aspiration. But what of the reality? Brexiteers determined to cut loose cleanly from the EU and the European customs union insist that trade can continue to flow, and borders will be invisible. Ask for clarification, though, and things get hazy.

(Not so in Spike Milligan’s satirical novel Puckoon, written in 1963 but set four decades previously. With startling prescience of today’s Brexit stand-off, his novel pokes fun at how clueless officials send the border through an Irish village. Because a tiny corner of the pub is now in Northern Ireland, locals gather there to drink because the beer is cheaper. When a local man dies in bed, his body is dragged to a local photographer: he’ll need snaps for a passport if the coffin is to pass from the church, on one side of the border, to the grave waiting on the other side.)

The post-Brexit hard border farce in London has been no surprise to anyone on the divided Irish island. Before the referendum, border concerns got more of an airing in the German newspapers than the British broadsheets. That blind spot confirmed a long-held Irish suspicion that Westminster has never really understood, nor cared about, the tragedy of the Northern Ireland troubles: nearly 3,500 people killed over 30 years.

That Irish resentment spikes further when Brexiteers claim that hard border fears have been thrown down as an artificial roadblock to a clean British getaway. That ignores—through ignorance or apathy—the very real concern that Brexit uncertainties could cause a serious slide in Northern Ireland’s economy, potentially driving young men without jobs or prospects into the arms of waiting splinter terror organizations.

The End of Magical Thinking

Hardliner Brexiteers insist the present, seamless management of the border for things like sales tax, excise, and security can be extended after Brexit. But this regime, developed through EU membership, will come to an end as Britain’s membership does. And even in the case of a new EU-UK free trade agreement, some kind of border controls will still be required to avoid smuggling.

No problem, say the Brexiteers: technology can prevent border queues. With hopes fading for a soft, Scandinavian solution, like that between Sweden and Norway, a less appetizing reality arises on the horizon: the hardest of borders, like that between Poland and Ukraine.

Poland is in the EU, the Ukraine is not—nor is it in the customs union or the EEA free-travel club of which Norway and Switzerland are members. And the border crossing at Dorohusk, 2000 kilometers east of London, is where Brexit magical thinking goes to die.

They use every kind of technology imaginable here to speed up the flow of cargo traffic: e-manifestos; in-road weighing scales; license-plate-reading cameras; automatic cross-checks with Europol databases; even stowaway scanners that can detect both carbon dioxide and heartbeats inside a sealed truck.

And yet, because the border is still hard, cargo-carrying trucks face a 24 hour wait to cross, while new EU security rules means all private cars are now stopped too.
All the technology you can buy, and infrastructure covering 12 hectares or almost 17 soccer pitches, cannot prevent the EU’s hard eastern border from being a depressing bottleneck.

Dorohusk is a memory of how things once were in Europe, and how things could be again if Britain crashes out of the EU and the backstop arrangement falls apart.
A hard border, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is a border that is “strongly controlled and protected … rather than one where people are allowed to pass through easily with few controls”.

No-deal Brexit means no-deal borders of the hard kind: in Northern Ireland, at Dover, and all other key trading points. With clogged ports and hard-border approach roads, Britain’s new chapter as a free-trading colossus may be over before it even begins.

The post Words Don’t Come Easy: “Hard Border” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Long before she entered politics, married, and acquired her tongue-twisting, double-barrel surname, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s dream was to be a teacher. Plan B: midwife.

She may need all the skills of those two jobs, and much more besides, if on Friday she becomes the eighth leader of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Everything has come at once for the woman known to all as AKK. And not just for her: ordinary Germans are struggling to understand the 56 year-old who seems to have emerged from nowhere as Angela Merkel’s heir apparent.

And yet her apparent overnight success masks a long climb up the ladder of power. That began with her 1984 election as councilor in her small town home of Püttlingen in Saarland, a tiny southwest German state, on the French border.

Along the way she has bettered CDU grandees, party colleagues, and, when she became the Saarland interior minister in 2000, promoted by state governor Peter Müller, she faced down local police and state prosecutors who openly questioned her authority. Those questions vanished, at the very latest, when she succeeded Müller as governor of Germany’s smallest state.

Taking Nothing For Granted

Eventually she heads to Hamburg leading in opinion polls, with 48 per cent of CDU supporters behind her, AKK is taking nothing for granted.

The new party leader will not be chosen by voters but 1,001 regional party delegates in a secret ballot. No one knows for sure how they will vote and, after an eight-stop tour of the country, AKK knows many are impressed with Friedrich Merz. The 63 year-old is the CDU’s prodigal son, a former deputy leader who clashed with Merkel and left but has returned from the wilderness to succeed her. He is a strong speaker, and doesn’t lack in confidence, while the tiny Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer can struggle to be noticed.

But unlike her main rival she has 18 years of uninterrupted government experience under her belt.

Many analysts have dubbed her Angela Merkel 2.0, given both are women and prefer compromise and ego-free politics. Like Merkel, Kramp-Karrenbauer owes her rise to hard work, being underestimated, and a love of calculated risk. But, from her record, AKK loves risk even more than the outgoing CDU leader.

Risk-Taker

In January 2012, a year after taking over as Saar state premier, she swapped coalition partners in office then called—and won—a snap election. Merkel was annoyed by AKK’s risk-taking but impressed with the results. Last February, Merkel lured her to Berlin as CDU secretary general.

Neither woman mentioned the obvious gravitas of the decision, confidantes say: becoming secretary general—as Merkel did many years before her—is AKK’s best chance to lead the CDU.

If she wins on Friday, analysts may soon spot similarities between the Saarland politician and another CDU leader: the late Helmut Kohl, from neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate. Like him, AKK has a sharp political mind and a knack for wrapping hard political polemic in mild regional German vowels.

That has allowed her both defend and attack the hot button political issue in this leadership race: Merkel’s refugee crisis response of 2015-16, that saw over one million enter Germany.

During the regional road show she backed the Merkel approach at the time, not to close German borders. Yet she has promised regional delegates that criminal asylum seekers should be deported at speed and “never allowed set foot again on European soil”—even if they come from war-torn Syria. Somehow she has managed to do so without being denounced as a populist hardliner.

Similarly, though pitching herself as the centrist continuity candidate, she has made a play for CDU conservatives—attacking liberal abortion laws and standing by remarks likening same-sex marriage to pedophilia and polygamy.

More Emotional, Less Deliberate

For journalist Kristina Dunz, author of the first AKK biography, the politician is a value conservative with a left-wing social policy heart, whose differences to Angela Merkel are more interesting than the similarities.

“She doesn’t wobble in her positions, even when criticized,” said Dunz. “She is more emotional … and not as slow and deliberate as Merkel. She is also more belligerent.”

AKK knows no one would believe her if she distanced herself too much from the woman who promoted her. She promises to keep the chancellor’s conciliatory approach to leadership—finding compromises that make everyone look good—but promises a more dynamic political style.

What will this look like in practice? An end, she vows, to the  “leaden” Merkel era of sitting out decisions or imposing “without alternative” decisions from above.

Instead her CDU will turn grassroots concerns into government policy, she says. As well as more dynamism vertically, she wants a horizontal transformation to re-invigorate the CDU’s various wings—from conservative to centrist—and revive the party’s profile as a catch-all, center-right Volkspartei .

That is the best way to beat back the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and pull back lost CDU voters, she says.

No Moment to Rest

If elected CDU leader on Friday, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer will have no moment to rest. She has to give back hope to the party—struggling on 28 percent in polls and down five points from the 2017 election disaster result.

Beyond revitalizing the party, and preparing it for two difficult state elections next year, she has to accommodate herself with Angela Merkel, who plans to stay on as chancellor until 2021.

Finally, the new CDU leader has to revive a grand coalition lumbering under its own leaden reputation. Its coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), are down to just 17 points in opinion polls and skidding from one identity crisis to the next. After taking six months to get into office, it is far from a given that this government will last the distance. If not, AKK—already thrust into the CDU leadership with little warning—could find herself running for the chancellery sooner than expected.

And, almost without planning it, the Saarland politician could soon find herself at the helm of the EU’s largest and most powerful member state—and effectively heading the bloc itself—in uncertain of times.

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© REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Watching EU leaders shuffle uncertainly around the Mirabell gardens in Salzburg, cameras clicking and whirring from the sidelines, I thought of when the pretty park—and indeed most of the city—attracted attention in 1964. The cast and crew took up residence to film “The Sound of Music,” a Hollywood musical about a singing family, a sinister duchess, and a young post boy who—spoiler alert—joins the Hitler Youth.

If they ever make a musical out of Brexit, it’s unlikely that, in the words of one Sound of Music tune, Salzburg will count among EU leaders’ favorite things.

With Brexit looming large, leaders’ hopes were again raised by the British spin machine that London might have something to move talks beyond the departure lounge. But hopes of entering a new space, to discuss a future relationship between Britain and the European Union, were once again dashed.

British Prime Minister Theresa May had everyone’s attention at dinner on Wednesday evening. With half a year to go until a disorderly departure from the EU, would May move? And would the EU shift in return, as senior officials had signaled before the meeting? No and no.

In the words of one dinner attendee, May “effectively read out an op-ed” she had written for that morning’s Die Welt newspaper. “To come to a successful conclusion, just as the UK has evolved its position, the EU will need to do the same,” she wrote, and said.

Everyone besides Britain views the UK’s position as wanting to have its cake and eat it. But they are waiting for London to put forward proposals that would make such cake-eating politically or legally possible for the EU27. Thus, the response of Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, to May’s after-dinner address was short and blunt: “It won’t work.”

Squaring the Circle

Talks on what happens after March 29 next year are stalled because London has yet to square the circle on the border that divides the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In six months’ time this will be an outer EU border and all such borders—particularly those which are also a customs border, as Britain wants—require checks and infrastructure.

This is unacceptable to Dublin and many in Northern Ireland who thought borders belonged in the bad old days of the province. The old border infrastructure from the Troubles was dismantled, never to return, after the 1998 peace agreement. Last December Britain agreed that Brexit must reflect and respect this when the UK departs the EU and the customs union.

Brussels put forward its proposal for turning this political aspiration into legal reality: minimize controls on the island of Ireland by keeping the province inside the EU customs union. Any checks on people or goods entering and leaving could then take place between Ireland and Great Britain, with a new border effectively in the Irish Sea.

But London views this as unacceptable: it would create different legal regimes within the UK—and Belfast politicians loyal to the crown fear this would separate them from the mainland. Their reservations carry weight because May depends on their parliamentary support in Westminster.

But if the EU’s legal proposal is unacceptable, what is the UK’s alternative? Salzburg could have been the moment when the prime minister presented even an outline. But she didn’t.

For the Irish, Brexit is not a technicality but, in the words of foreign minister Simon Coveney this week, a “lose-lose-lose situation.” The best Dublin hopes for on Brexit is a damage-limitation deal. Open borders in Ireland will keep people and trade moving. But Irish trucks having to exit and re-enter the EU on their way to mainland Europe could be disastrous—in particular for fresh food exporters.

For Dublin, the so-called Brexit backstop—no border on the island of Ireland—is as non-negotiable in Brexit talks as the 1998 peace agreement, the result of years of complicated talks backed by Dublin, London, but also Brussels. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that all EU leaders he had spoken to gave him their “absolute support in standing behind Ireland,”and that the only acceptable EU agreement on Brexit was one that worked for Ireland. “I am leaving here very reassured,” he said.

With the clock running down to “finalize and formalize” a still non-existent Brexit deal, EU leaders will come together again next month for a moment of truth meeting—and possibly for an emergency meeting in November, in case more truth is needed.

All or Nothing

Will the EU27 hold together in the weeks ahead? Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán suggested in Salzburg that a group of EU leaders were seeking to “punish” the UK.  But in their closed-door talks, EU officials said, Orbán had nothing to say, not even when officials from Poland, a close ally of the Hungarian leader, proposed greater flexibility in the mandate for EU Brexit negotiators.

After a “frank bilateral” with Tusk, the British prime minister left Salzburg. The remaining EU27 leaders stayed to discuss the political declaration on their future relationship with the UK. That is supposed to accompany the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement but is also suspended in limbo.

Again, leaders reiterated that existing British proposals could not provide the basis of such a relationship. May has proposed a free trade agreement between her country and the EU, but wants to exclude services. EU leaders, with thinning patience, insist the internal market is not a cherry-picking farm: it’s all or nothing.

For what felt like the 1000^th time since the 2016 Brexit vote, Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “We were all unified today that there can be no compromises on the internal market.” French president Emmanuel Macron describes such thinking as “unacceptable” and called on his EU colleagues to increase pressure on London in the coming weeks. Echoing growing voices in Britain, Maltese leader Joseph Muscat called for a second referendum in the UK—but other EU leaders declined to follow suit.

The EU circus left Salzburg with leaders calling for compromise with London. Even the Irish—who have the most to lose—said they were open to creative thinking on “language and detail” of any agreement. But this is difficult, they say, given the British have presented nothing to work on.

“De-Dramatizing”

The lack of progress on Brexit couldn’t hide a significant shift on the EU’s other major headache: a long-term political answer to the emotive migration question.

Tusk said there was a “sharp determination” to expand the EU’s border and coast guard Frontex. He said most EU leaders want to press on with plans to create a standing corps of 10,000 border guards—amid some concerns over national sovereignty.

After the pre-summer drama on migration, pushed by German domestic politics, EU leaders transferred their hopes of “de-dramatizing” Brexit onto the refugee question.

Since 2015, EU member states have been divided on whether they should be obliged to share the continent’s refugee burden. In a bid to end the deadlock, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposed a new push for “flexibility solidarity.” Describing it as “a proposal I don’t even like myself,” he suggested countries that refuse to accept asylum seekers, such as those in central Europe, should be obliged to contribute on other—chiefly financial—fronts.

President Macron warned in his post-summit press conference that countries that refuse to contribute more to Schengen or other solidarity measures will be edged out of the common travel area. “Countries that don’t want more Europe will no longer touch structural funds,” he said.

Meanwhile EU leaders have pressed on with plans to push offshore the refugee issue, returning people rescued at sea to Egypt and other non-EU countries.

With the migration issue flaring up again in Germany before state elections in the fall, Chancellor Merkel is happy not to push for big changes at the EU level. Above all the German leader knows that, after leading the moral charge on refugees three years ago, such a migration compromise now is less music to her ears than the sound of a political climb-down.

The post The Salzburg Shuffle appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

“Sisters, sisters/There were never such devoted sisters…”

When US songwriter Irving Berlin penned his ironic ode to the joys of sisterhood for the 1954 movie “White Christmas,” Germany’s most famous political sisters were already nine years old.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was founded just a month after Nazi Germany’s capitulation in May 1945, with Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) following four months later. The war-shattered country would be under direct Allied occupation for years to come, but the CDU/CSU were confident they could become the future Germany’s dominant political force.

Pitching themselves as non-denominational, center-right catch-all parties, heirs to defunct old center parties and an alternative to the working class Social Democrats (SPD), the CDU and CSU formed a parliamentary alliance in 1948, with the foundation of the (West) German federal republic just months away. The Munich-based CSU agreed to focus on the largely agrarian southern state of Bavaria while the CDU took the rest of the West Germany.

This deal, renewed at the start of every new parliamentary session, joins a CDU parliamentary party head with a CSU politician deputy. It gives the Bavarians considerable political clout far beyond their state borders where the CSU has governed continuously for half a century, mostly alone.

“Two different faces, but in tight places/We think and we act as one”

Their pact is based on common political interests and the promise “never to stand in competition in any federal state.” It has allowed the CDU/CSU meet their ambition to dominate West German politics. From the first chancellor Konrad Adenauer to Angela Merkel today, the CDU/CSU has provided the chancellor for all but 20 years of the last seven decades.

Despite shared principles and goals, both parties “adhere to the basic principle that each (parliamentary party) is a group of parliamentarians of their respective, independent parties.”

This allows the CSU, should it wish, to vote against the CDU “in a question of particular importance.” But, to minimize potential for political chaos or blackmail, fundamental decisions only come onto the agenda “through consent of both groups.” The CSU is famous for having a bark far worse than its bite, but decades of practice at barking can make it an uncomfortable and unpredictable sister.

“Those who’ve seen us/Know that not a thing could come between us”

By and large the CDU/CSU agreement has held, but not without testing episodes. The biggest drama came 42 years ago in Kreuth, a picturesque resort town in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps and for years the location of the CSU’s winter retreat.

After the 1976 federal election, the legendary CSU leader Franz-Josef Strauss attacked his CDU ally Helmut Kohl as “political pygmy.” Strauss was furious because the CDU/CSU won the election but still failed to unseat the SPD alliance with the liberal Free Democrats (FPD).

Talking himself into a state, Strauss suggested the CDU was more political ballast than a boost and mulled pushing beyond Bavaria’s borders as a fourth national political force.
His threat to end the CDU/CSU alliance met with considerable resistance inside his own party and prompted a counter-threat from the CDU to launch a party in Bavaria. Eventually Strauss blinked, and the sisterhood survived.

“Never had to have a chaperone, no sir/I’m there to keep my eye on her”

The latest challenge to the sisterhood began to build after the 2015/2016 refugee crisis brought over a million people into the country, accentuating the CDU/CSU political and cultural differences. The Bavarians, on the front lines of the crisis, demanded a more robust line from Berlin. But CDU leader Angela Merkel followed a more liberal, open-border policy while she pressed for an EU burden-sharing agreement for migrants. After a tense standoff, the Bavarians fell into line for last year’s federal election. But not before CSU leader Horst Seehofer accused her of operating an “unlawful regime” on migration and gave her a humiliating dressing down at his party conference.

After disastrous election results last year, the migration row flared up again this summer. With his CSU facing a state election disaster in October, Seehofer and his party ramped up tough talk on migration to impress law-and-order voters. Seehofer, who is also federal interior minister in Berlin, threatened to unilaterally close off the German (i.e. Bavarian) border to Austria to refugees already registered elsewhere in the EU—and even to resign—unless Merkel achieved a European agreement to throttle immigration.

It was a high-risk move because making good on his threat would have blown up the CDU/CSU alliance. In the end, Chancellor Merkel returned from an all-night Brussels summit with political concessions.

“All kinds of weather, we stick together/The same in the rain or sun”

Whether that is enough to appease CSU voters—and avoid another family squabble—will only become clear when the Bavarian state election results come in on October 14.

Now aged 73, with no other eligible suitors, the aging sisters of German politics have always been more devoted to power than each other. But they hide it well, presenting themselves as living proof that sibling rivalry may not be easy, but need not be fatal.

The post Words Don’t Come Easy: “Schwesterpartei” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

With scorched fields, parched rivers, and sweltering temperatures, Germany hasn’t had a summer like this in living memory. And Berlin hasn’t had a Sommerloch, or silly season, quite like this one in years either, with debates emerging that have real potential to last long after Germany’s political class returns.

Perhaps the most lively debate that has emerged over this summer break is over the prospect of reinstating compulsory military service. Seven years ago, Germany consigned to history the year-long military service duty for young people, as well as the alternative—civil, or community, service. But now there’s talk of reversing that decision, at least if we’re to believe Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, general secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Kramp-Karrenbauer is considered a possible successor to Merkel and has built a reputation as a straight-talker, not known for shooting off her mouth. Last weekend she told a German newspaper that reviving military and alternative civil service was one of issues she was confronted with on nearly every stop of a recent “listening tour,” where she traveled across the country speaking to CDU party members.

This being August, when news stories are as rare as rain clouds, media and political commentators happily pounced on the story. Compulsory military service was abolished in 2011 as the defense ministry overhauled Germany’s armed forces, or the Bundeswehr, into a new, slimmed-down model of volunteers and professional recruits. But numbers have plummeted more dramatically than expected: at the time of reunification, there were 585,000 soldiers in the Bundeswehr; last year, there were around 179,000, with more than 20,000 vacant posts. The situation is so serious that the ministry is considering a new recruitment drive to encourage EU nationals to join up.

Despite those recruitment challenges, even those concerned about Germany’s struggle to meet its security obligations are wary. “Focusing on military service is too short-sighted,” said Roderich Kiesewetter, CDU head of the Bundestag foreign policy committee, warning the debate was too complex “to be used to fill a silly season hole.”

Unsettled by the momentum of the debate, a federal government spokeswoman intervened to insist Berlin has no plans to bring back military service. And Kramp-Karrenbauer took to Twitter to calm the waters, insisting she was not necessarily in favor of compulsory conscription, adding that “there are many ways to serve.” Still, she is likely to be happy she’s started a debate as the CDU faces tricky negotiations over a new party program and its next election manifesto. Paul Ziemak, head of the CDU youth wing, praised the idea of a community year as an “opportunity give something back while strengthening national unity.

Merkel, currently on holiday, has yet to express an opinion, though she will be watching closely to see which way public opinion blows before making her move. A poll this month found that nearly 56 percent of Germans would welcome a return of military duty. Legal experts warn that reactivating compulsory military service would be constitutionally difficult, as politicians would have to justify the move on security grounds.

Even if national service is not likely to be restored, the debate may woo back German conservative voters from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). They view the abolition of military service as one of the great policy betrayals of the Merkel era.

Merkel’s center-left coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), and other opposition parties are skeptical of the entire debate. Many who did their year of obligatory service remember how they were exploited as free labor—most frequently in the health sector, working in hospitals and elderly homes. Reintroducing civil service could backfire, they fear, with trained staff replaced by unskilled volunteers.

The Spahn Tour and a New Movement

But that could serve one man’s political agenda nicely: Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister and another would-be Merkel successor. At the height of the summer, Spahn has been busy taking on Germany’s healthcare system. He pushed through a new law that will cap the number of patients to be cared for by home staff, in a bid to reduce the work overload for caregivers in for-profit facilities, where low pay and high stress has made the work so unattractive.

Despite Germany’s ageing population, there are too few care workers on the market. To counteract that, Spahn wants to boost salaries in a bid to attract previously badly-paid staff back into the workplace. He has also pushed through changes forcing employers to pay the same contributions for health insurance as their employees starting next year. And registered doctors will soon have to guarantee more office hours for patients on public health insurance as well. It remains to be seen whether these measures will have the desired effect, but for Germany’s ambitious health minister, who has an eye on the chancellor’s post, failing is not an option.

Meanwhile, on the other end of Germany’s political landscape, the summer season has seen the soft launch of a new left-wing movement called Aufstehen (“Arise”). Ahead of the official launch on September 4, its website went live last weekend and promptly drew in around 40,000 supporters—though it’s not at all clear to what exactly they have signed up.

What we know so far is that Arise has drawn inspiration from other political movements both inside and outside traditional party structures, from left-wing Democrat Bernie Sanders in the United States to France’s hard left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The driving force is Sahra Wagenknecht, Bundestag co-leader of the Left Party, and her husband Oskar Lafontaine, a former leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Wagenknecht has two main priorities: to attract people turned off by mainstream politics and to reactivate a left-wing majority by satisfying public demand for solutions to the social justice issues dominating German life, like living wages, pensions above the poverty line, and affordable housing

“Our goal is naturally [to achieve] different political majorities, and a new government with a social agenda,” Wagenknecht told Der Spiegel over the weekend.

Though details are scarce, the plan is for Aufstehen to develop policies and feed them into the political debate. Wagenknecht insists her aim isn’t to splinter Germany’s already divided left, but to call out parties (read: the SPD) whom she says are more fond of left-wing lip service than real policy.

“If the pressure is great enough,” she said, “parties will, in their own interest, open their lists to our ideas and campaigners.”

With temperatures hitting 36 degrees Celsius this week in Berlin, however, it remains to be seen how much appetite there is for Wagenknecht turning up the heat still further on her fellow left-wingers.

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© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

On Wednesday, Bavaria opened the doors on seven “anchor centers.” The German word Anker is an acronym that leaves little doubt as to the centers’ purpose: arrival, decision, and return. The CSU hopes similar facilities will open elsewhere in Germany, but other federal states are skeptical and have yet to sign up. Opening one of seven such anchor centers, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder talked about using a “carrot and stick” approach to migration, providing arrivals with a decision within 18 months on whether they can stay or must go.

Aware of growing public skepticism and security concerns over migration, Bavarian officials say these centers will expedite asylum applications of people who have little chance of remaining, or those whom officials deem a threat. Asylum seekers with a good chance of securing residency, meanwhile, will be offered a chance to find work or enroll in training schemes or integration programs.

Integration Barriers?

But critics are asking how much integration is possible for people living in an out-of-town barracks behind mesh fences. The migration NGO Pro Asyl has called the anchor centers an “obstacle to integration by government decree,” with a “catastrophic effect” on those housed there. Meanwhile another NGO, Save the Children, attacked the fenced-in centers as a potential risk to the safety and development of their youngest residents.

“The same rights apply to a refugee child as any other children, such as access to education, healthcare and … protection,” said Susanne Krüger, head of the organization in Germany. The centers are controversial in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin, too. Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, a government commissioner responsible for children’s rights, said he was concerned these were not guaranteed in the anchor centers. He has publicly questioned whether the Bavarian anchor centers in their current form conform with Germany’s commitments to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Bavarians have knocked back all the critics, with CSU leader Horst Seehofer (also federal interior minister in Berlin) saying he was certain the anchor centers will be a “big success.” The opening of the centers comes ahead of a crucial state election in Bavaria in October. After decades in power, the CSU finds itself well short of enough support to retain its absolute majority in the state parliament. It hopes the new facilities have been launched in time to show wavering voters that the CSU is taking a tough law-and-order approach to migration, three years after more than one million people arrived in the country, largely through Bavaria.

On Wednesday, Bavaria’s state interior minister Joachim Hermann pointed out that the camps were all housed in pre-existing asylum centers. What’s new is that, instead of being distributed to municipalities, up to 1,500 residents will live in each center full-time, alongside asylum and other related agencies that process applications.

The camps are not closed and residents will be allowed come and go, he noted, while children will receive education inside the camps rather than at local schools. But Hermann made no bones about the purpose of the facilities: authorities had been instructed to take “visibly swift action,” he said, against migrants who break the law. Later this week, Bavaria will increase financial incentives for voluntary repatriation of migrants as well.

The new measures complement federal interior minister Horst Seehofer’s migration “master plan,” a 63-point paper presented last month to optimize and standardize asylum procedures. Seehofer had threatened to resign in Berlin and collapse the government unless his blueprint was adopted. In the end he struck a compromise with Chancellor Angela Merkel to deport migrants who have already filed for asylum elsewhere in the EU—if the other country agrees. Now he is engaged in talks with neighboring Austria and Italy to make the deal come about.

New Rules for Refugees

Wednesday was not just the launch of Bavaria’s new anchor centers, it also coincided with the start of new family reunification quotas, allowing up to 1,000 relatives of refugees with subsidiary (limited) protection to come to Germany each month. Those with subsidiary protection–people, often Syrians, who are not personally persecuted but nevertheless face a threat of serious harm in their home country—had not been able to bring relatives over since August 2015. Now a fraction of them will be able to.

Still, the opposition parties criticize a law they say makes international refugee law subject to arbitrary upper limits. But to keep her alliance together in Berlin, Chancellor Merkel has allowed her Bavarian allies considerable autonomy on the emotive asylum issue ahead of October’s election. Her other coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are unimpressed by the new centers—not because they go too far, but because they are what interior spokesman Burkhard Lischka called a “bluff” with little practical change. “Just swapping out a few signs is silly,” he said.

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© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Drinks and relief were flowing freely last Thursday evening in a beer garden in central Berlin, just across the river from the chancellery. Many of those enjoying a cool beer were German parliamentarians and their staff.

They had sneaked out of the Bundestag while waiting for the last vote on the federal budget—one of the final hurdles between them and their summer holidays. It was a welcome return to business, given that many feared their holiday plans might be in serious jeopardy.

A dramatic dispute over migration among Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU center-right conservative bloc had pushed the chancellor’s fourth-term grand coalition to the brink of collapse. In the end they deferred the row and narrowly dodged a snap election, meaning the summer holidays were back on. But many of the politicians and journalists departing Berlin for the Baltic coast, Bavaria, or further afield are doing so with a sense of dissatisfaction. Even by sedate Berlin standards, the new government is less twinkle- than treacle-toed.

It’s been a year since Germany’s federal election campaign began. Voters punished the CDU/CSU and their coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, at the polls, leaving the chancellor scrambling to form a government. After her first attempt to build a coalition with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens fell apart, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the traumatized SPD to pull themselves together and go back into government. With huge reservations, and six months after election day, they did. Yet now, with barely 100 days in office, the current government has been all but paralyzed by the migration row.

And so President Steinmeier again warned the departing government ministers: stop the political games and get back to work, sooner rather than later. “People expect answers,” he told public broadcaster ZDF in a summer interview. “They want their daily problems to be solved.”

The Real Debate

He’s not the only one impatient at the pace—and priorities—in Berlin. A survey for public broadcaster ARD last week showed that migration, despite all the attention and emotion surrounding the topic, is not among Germans’ most pressing issues. Some 79 percent of those polled say they are concerned there aren’t enough nursing care staff to tend to Germany’s fast-aging population. Some 73 percent want more energy invested in education and schools. And 70 percent are concerned about a failure to address the lack of affordable accommodation in urban areas.

Tweeting those numbers last week, SPD general secretary Lars Klingbeil added: “And now let’s talk about a few other issues in the country, eh?”

These problems are not new. (The demographic time bomb in particular has been coming at us for years. Today, one in five Germans is over 65). But after their worst results last year since 1949, Berlin’s governing coalition parties know their survival next time out depends on delivering palpable improvement on these burning social issues.

With around 36,000 jobs unfilled in the nursing care field, many elderly homes around Germany have imposed a moratorium on new residents. To reverse that trend, a new €570 million plan is offering tax-free bonuses of up to €5,000 for care workers who return to the job—and €3,000 for new recruits.

Despite the huge demand for their services, the rules of supply and demand do not seem to have any effect on their pay. Studies show German care workers (mostly women) are poorly organized and subject to individual pay deals often agreed outside union collective bargaining. The result is that their profession is hugely unattractive, with hourly earnings of €10-14 an hour. That is well below the €17/hour German average—and this for shift-work with significant physical and mental demands.

Given how quickly Germany is aging, Berlin’s plans to add more care workers seem modest: the government promises to fill 13,000 extra jobs by 2019, just a third of the existing gap.

Addressing the lack of affordable housing will be no easier. Berlin has reintroduced a tax credit for home builders and buyers and, in addition, has promised to make €1.5 billion extra available to build social housing. But far more intervention, and greater coordination with the regions, will be required to reverse the trend of 2017, when the number of social housing units actually built shrank by six percent.

In 2017, a federal government report noted how a 50 percent boost in social housing spending in 2017 compared to the previous year “brought no corresponding rise in the building of social apartments,” even though rising rents are putting the squeeze on Germany’s low- and middle-income earners. Experts say that’s because government cash injections are often swallowed up by growing land and construction prices and low interest rates.

Many fear Berlin’s new tax subsidy for house buyers/builders, to a value of up to €12,000 per year, could also miss the mark, driving up prices rather than bringing into the property market some of the 55 percent of Germans who rent. And as Der Spiegel reported, the scheme will end up benefiting wealthier Germans who can afford to buy far more than low-income families who cannot. What’s more, the decentralized nature of Germany’s government leaves Angela Merkel with few levers to influence the pressing housing issue beyond tax subsidies and cash injections.

Education, the third priority for German voters, is another turf war. Post-war rules ensured that education was a matter for the 16 state capitals rather than the federal government. But for more than a decade, Berlin put state capitals under pressure to meet new budget deficit rules, ie cut school spending significantly. In a bid to reverse this, state governments have agreed to relax post-war rules to accept almost €11 billion in federal investment funds.

Plans are underway to renovate moldy schools and kindergartens, increase the number of all-day schools, and boost funds for improved digital infrastructure in education as well.

But the clock is ticking. The SPD has vowed to review the progress in a year’s time to date on the government’s program for the country. After squandering the year since the election, Germany’s grand coalition politicians should enjoy their holidays and come back well-rested. Come autumn, they’ll need to hit the ground running.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

After her third late-night crisis meeting in four days, Chancellor  Angela Merkel looked understandably worse for wear on Monday when she announced an eleventh-hour deal with her rebellious Bavarian sister party to tighten migration policy and save her government.

The agreement emerged from a last-ditch attempt to prevent Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) from implementing its own controls on their border with Austria against Merkel’s wishes. That threat had sparked an almighty row between Berlin and Munich that risked the rupture of the CSU’s seven-decade alliance with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

“After a tough struggle and some difficult days, we’ve found a really good compromise,” said Merkel. The deal salvages her chancellorship and fourth-term coalition, and will see her interior minister Horst Seehofer, the CSU leader, stay on in Berlin after he threatened to resign on Sunday evening.

“We agreed after very intense negotiations,” he said after the meeting. “This is a clear agreement to prevent illegal immigration in the future on the German-Austrian border.”

They agreed on so-called transit centers at three major crossings along the German-Austrian border, where asylum-seekers will be directed into closed camps; those who have been previously registered in other EU countries will be returned, as long as Berlin has an agreement with those countries (more on that here).

This week’s dramatic escalation caught some by surprise, but the dispute had been simmering since the 2015-16 “refugee crisis,” when Merkel–fearing a humanitarian disaster–declined to close German borders to more than one million asylum seekers on their way on the “Balkan route.” The CSU, based in Bavaria, the state where most asylum seekers were arriving, demanded a tougher stance. But it eventually fell in line behind Merkel. After both parties were trounced in last September’s federal election, the CSU fears a repeat drubbing in October’s state election in Bavaria and is scrambling to position itself as tough on migration.

Not Over Yet

But there are more challenges to Merkel’s government-saving compromise: It now has to be approved by the third party in her coalition, the Social Democrats (SPD).  Three years ago the center-left SPD rejected a similar proposal as “arrest zones.” On Tuesday, Katarina Barley, the federal justice minister who is from the SPD and will be involved in drafting legislation for the facilities, said she had more questions than answers. In particular: what happens to people who avoid the three border crossings and choose another entry point to Bavaria along the 819 kilometer green frontier?

The transit camps, whatever form they take, are not part of their coalition agreement and are highly unpopular with SPD left-wingers. On the other hand, after disastrous elections last year for Germany’s big parties, a tortuous six-month interregnum, and now the near government collapse, there is little appetite in Berlin for more turmoil—and far less for a snap election.

After weathering the refugee crisis on the frontlines in 2015, the CSU hopes its voters will forgive it for originally backing Merkel as hundreds of thousands entered the country through Bavaria.

Though asylum applications have dropped off significantly (68,000 so far this year compared to 746,000 in all of 2016), the CSU is confident that, by extracting a law-and-order pound of flesh from Merkel, it can win back voters from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Following Orders

Seehofer stays on as interior minister and CSU leader, but at the mercy of the real strong man in Bavaria: state premier Markus Söder, another key figure in this government crisis. Seehofer now faces the difficult task of trying to restore some sort of working relationship with the CDU and Angela Merkel (after reportedly saying, in the throes of the dispute, that he “can’t work with this woman” anymore); but he must also follow orders from Söder in Munich if the approaching election requires further muscle-flexing.

Germany’s asylum agreement looks like a victory for the CSU over the chancellor. The fuzzy “transit center” euphemism marks a radical departure from Merkel’s liberal “we can manage this” approach to the refugee crisis in 2015.

Facing a darkening public mood on asylum as attacks committed by refugees have garnered high media attention–particularly after a high-profile murder-rape committed by a young Iraqi asylum seeker–Merkel yielded to her coalition partner to keep the peace. She saved her coalition and maintained her hand on the tiller.

But she is a diminished figure. Her party rallied to support her during the CSU’s attacks, but her authority is no longer absolute. It seems only a matter of time before an ambitious challenger overtakes her or, pre-empting such a move, she stands down in Berlin.

On the other hand German voters, while uncertain about Merkel’s record on migration, are unsure of whether there is any realistic alternative–or one that would be any more reliable. A poll last week showed that even in Bavaria, she was more popular than local strongman Markus Söder. In her own party there are many figures who feel best-suited to inherit the Merkel mantle, but none where the public agree.

Even during a crisis like this in Germany, it still seems to hold true that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Almost a decade ago, when the euro crisis brought Europe to the brink, I asked a senior official working for German Chancellor Angela Merkel why Berlin was being so ruthlessly hardline and orthodox about imposing austerity measures on already struggling crisis countries. Surely it was possible to adopt a softer touch at least in public to avoid humiliation, I suggested, “because eventually Berlin will need a favor from these countries.”

Then, the Merkel official saw things differently, but he may have changed his mind by now. Last week I watched him follow the chancellor into an informal meeting in Brussels, the so-called mini summit on migration policy, which took place less than a week before the European Council’s end-of-June meeting. Officially, it was about creating an opportunity to sound out the appetite in Europe for closer cooperation on the continent’s unresolved refugee problem. In reality, it was about favors: Merkel was testing her partners’ readiness for an expedited deal to save her coalition government, the center-right political CDU/CSU alliance, and her chancellorship.

Three years after more than a million people arrived in Germany, the migration crisis is dominating headlines again. This time it’s not about numbers—most agree they have fallen significantly, in Germany and across the continent—but about a lingering grudge match between the chancellor and her conservative Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

After swallowing their pride and following Merkel’s initial open door policy in 2015/2016, they worry that unresolved asylum tensions and public security concerns will see them fall short of an absolute majority in the Bavarian state election in October for the first time since World War II.

Alarmed, CSU leader and federal interior minister Horst Seehofer has threatened to close German borders to people already refused asylum, or to those who have already been registered as asylum-seekers elsewhere in the EU. He says he will do this unless Merkel can convince her EU allies to agree to measures achieving an equivalent end before July 1.

Merkel has warned that closing Germany’s borders could trigger the domino effect across Europe she tried to avoid in 2015 by keeping borders open. If Seehofer proceeds with the closure against her wishes, she has to fire him. His CSU would then pull out of government, and her fourth-term coalition, which marked 100 days in office at the end of June, would collapse.

A CSU Gun to the Chancellor’s Head

With a CSU gun to her head, Merkel has been forced into crisis diplomacy mode, attempting to pull off in days the kind of EU refugee deal that the continent has failed to secure in more than three years. Leaving the refugee issue unresolved has resulted in a very different political climate in Europe now as compared to 2015 (even with far fewer new arrivals) and emboldened populist and right-wing governments in Italy, Austria, Central Europe, and Scandinavia. As if on cue, ahead of the mini-summit of 17 European leaders in Brussels, Italy and Malta turned back a ship filled with 239 rescued asylum-seekers.

While Merkel demands a pan-European deal, CSU pressure has forced her into seeking bi- or trilateral deals, similar to that struck with Turkey in 2016, to stop large numbers of asylum-seekers from reaching Germany and Europe. But Italy, one of the countries she needs a deal with, has a new populist government demanding an overhaul of the EU’s so-called Dublin rules. These oblige member states to process asylum-seekers that first enter the EU across its borders. They place a heavy burden on Italy, Greece, and Spain.

Rome is pushing to scrap the Dublin regulation and create offshore migrant screening centers in Africa. But, as the EU Commission has noted, no African country has come forward to host such “regional disembarkation centers,” as they’re being called. French President Emmanuel Macron, who earlier agreed to take back from Germany asylum-seekers already registered in France, criticized member states who benefit from EU solidarity yet “voice massive national selfishness when it comes to migrant issues.” New Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez agreed there is still much work to do, but that a clear, common understanding is emerging of a need for a European vision to deal with the challenge.

Not everyone is that optimistic. Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio attacked Paris for “pushing back people” over their shared border and warned on Facebook that France could be “Italy’s No. 1 enemy on this emergency.” In Brussels, Italy’s partners remain unsure about who speaks for the new government in Rome: Di Maio, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, or Interior Minister Matteo Salvini of the far-right League.

In addition, Berlin officials close to Merkel—aware that they are on the back foot—are alert for horse-trading approaches from countries like Italy and Greece, on banking and sovereign debt respectively, that would be political dynamite back in Germany.

Other EU countries are clearly less interested in extracting favors from Merkel. They sense a golden opportunity to weaken or even topple the German leader. Since 2015, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have refused to accept mandatory quotas to redistribute accepted asylum-seekers across the bloc. They stayed away from the weekend gathering, with Polish Prime Minister Matteusz Morawiecki speaking for all them in dismissing “warmed-up” quota proposals “we’ve already rejected.”

Shuttling Diplomacy

Shuttling between the various camps is a relatively new leader on the European stage: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (see also our Close-Up in this issue). From July 1, Merkel’s day of reckoning, the head of Vienna’s anti-immigration populist coalition is also the head of the EU’s rotating presidency.

As foreign minister in 2015, Kurz faced down Merkel by closing the so-called Balkan route without consulting Berlin. He then told the German tabloid Bild that it was “good and necessary” that she, “like most in Europe, changed her migration path massively.” The Austrian leader, who leads a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), is pushing for ironclad border controls around Europe. Crisscrossing Europe in recent days, he has picked up an impressive list of like-minded allies.

Top of the class is Bavarian state premier Markus Söder, reportedly the driving force behind the CSU push against Merkel. But for all their concern over asylum ahead of October’s state election, three quarters of Bavarians told the Forsa polling agency that they see other pressing problems that are “just as or even more important” than migration. And more than two thirds of Bavarians—68 percent—actually back Angela Merkel’s efforts to seek agreement at EU level over following a CSU national strategy.

Still, as the clock ticks down for Angela Merkel, even breaking the refugee deadlock is not certain to save her. Her Bavarian frenemies insist they will have the last word on whether any new EU measures obviate the need for national measures. They need credible proposals to rescue their looming election and save face in Berlin.

Offering them a way out of the political corner they have painted themselves into in Bavaria, and avoiding political tremors in Germany and across Europe, will require a soft, but firm diplomatic touch in Berlin—now more than ever.

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