Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

We’d like to kick off with a recent speech by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in which he outlined a vision for a European Union of the future. Was there anything in this speech that spoke to you?
Louisa Slavkova: There were quite a few interesting points. However, there was also some wishful thinking when it comes to the role of the non-governmental sector in Europe. The Commission would like to be in a more intense conversation with the NGOs, but this is something we’ve heard before – just like the commission says it would love to be closer to the citizens, which on a structural level isn’t really happening.
You could argue that national politicians are the ones who have to start a dialogue with citizens about the future of Europe, or members of the European parliament should be having these conversations when they go back home. But while these conversations do happen, they happen in a very small circle, so that basically the nature and substance of the EU still remain quite far away from citizens, at least in Bulgaria.

How should Europe engage with its population and implement reforms? Is this top-down, or bottom-up? How can we have a process that is more transparent and more democratic?
Daniel Kruse: Well, with our Open State collective we are holding what we call “innovation camps,” which offer one model for engagement. These are rather long-term events where we try to dig deep into issues and find new ideas. We just held one on politics, which we called the Open State of Politics. It was five days in a wild former botanical theme park in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a, and we invited 20 political innovators from across the EU. We tried to make them break with their daily routine a little bit and encourage introspection.

This is slightly different than what Mr. Juncker outlined yesterday. From what you’re saying, your approach sounds more like a disruption than what is usually being done. Could you give an example of what was being discussed there?
Kruse: This camp invited “democracy innovators” who act outside of the parliamentary system and offer new approaches to politics. There were people from Liquid Democracy, people who have just founded a new party in Germany – Demokratie in Bewegung (“Democracy in Motion”) – people from the ZEIT Online project “#D17” who traveled around the country to meet and connect with people in rural areas. It was a highly diverse group, and we looked for something that they all shared, that all these different people cherished. We’re just having our first evaluation meeting today, so it’s very fresh.
But the question is how these innovators have an impact, or how these innovations become policies, at least in the mid- to long-term.

Did you come up with any ideas about to how to bring the EU closer to its citizens?
Kruse: There’s a couple of things. For example, we heard the story of a very active online hate commentator. When a journalist finally met him and interviewed him, he found out that this guy had kids, two cars, was voting for the Greens – he was a very settled employee in an IT company, and yet he felt completely left out by what happens in the EU. He can vote every four years for his own national government, but he has no influence at all on the EU level and doesn’t know what’s happening.

What’s it like in Bulgaria, Louisa? Is there also this feeling of being completely detached from what the EU does?
Slavkova: Well, you have to keep in mind that our country is still considered one of the new member states, so the whole narrative about why we are part of the EU is kind of in its first generation. The older generation, the one that was part of the conversation in the nineties about which direction we wanted to take – not East, but rather West – and that we wanted to become part of NATO and the EU, they know why they’re part of the Union, more or less. And when you travel around the country, you see these big signs all over the place that tell you “This project is supported by the cohesion fund” or “That project is supported by the structural fund,” so on that level the EU is visually present.
On top of that, a lot of people realize that the region in which we live is quite challenging, and one of the main sources of investment actually comes from various EU funds. So there is a very strong positive attitude.
On the other hand, we just had a democracy camp for young people in the South. When they speak about their future vision for democracy in this country, the EU does not come up. That is quite interesting, because this is the generation that was born way after 1989, and for them the EU is a given. For them, free travel and all the other added values of membership are a given. I was a student in Germany and had to renew my visa every three months, but for them that’s ancient history.
Engaging them in a conversation about the European Union when they actually don’t feel that they need to is quite a challenge.

Kruse: A main issue is that the EU was defined in its beginnings as an economic partnership, and was then elaborated by politicians and in contracts and in structures. There was less talk about soft issues, like the cultures of the EU and exchanges among people – real-world meetings of people so you really get to know your fellow Europeans. So we’re left with just this national identity, and really don’t know what the others are like.
People are only now starting to work on that. Threats like populism and the refugee crisis demand that we stick together, and unfortunately people are pointing fingers instead. Martin Schulz, the SPD’s candidate in the recent German elections, emphasized this, saying that we need to distribute this pressure on the shoulders of the many in the EU, rather than allow some countries to say we cannot take any more refugees. Only now is the EU defining itself, in response to pressure from the outside.
I think one of the main reasons that voters in rural areas voted for right-wing parties is because they lack the positive experiences of Europe – of traveling, of studying abroad, of meeting people. Maybe they’ve occasionally spent holidays in Italy, but that’s not really getting to know what it means to be European. Personally, I only really figured out how much I loved being European when I did a trip through Latin America; I felt it was very different, and I realized I actually like being European. It’s really only in opposition to other things that you get to know your identity.

You’ve both looked at civic participation with the government and the EU, albeit on different levels. Daniel, you co-founded reCampaign, which started as a side event to re:publica and now is one of Europe’s most important meetings on digitalized society; Louisa, you co-founded the Sofia Platform. Is there a way that governments can connect with these new ways in which citizens are using the internet?
Kruse: I’m always in favor of sectors talking to each other and learning from each other instead of seeing themselves as completely separate. If you look at the last re:publica conference, there was a big booth and a big publication from the German Ministry of Labor on “Work 4.0.” They had a huge brochure, and presented an alternative idea to basic income. The impetus to do that came from the digital side, where everyone was talking about basic income; the ministry’s initiative was a reaction to that.
Obviously there are bridges between the two camps, and politics can benefit from working with the digital community, including the world of start-ups, agile working, and non-hierarchical participation. Sometimes in the internet bubble people are really ahead of the curve. They’re thinking about building up alternative everyday lives where they circumvent failed state policies, where they have their own decision models, where it’s mostly about solidarity and not paying taxes to anywhere. That’s two steps ahead of where politics is.
I think that the people who visited our camp, who all have great potential, intentionally avoid the classic political system because they aim to be more radical and bolder, or work on their own smaller communities. They don’t really want to operate on a national or EU level anymore because it’s so far away and so hard to change.

Speaking of European identity, you said that you felt the most European when you were traveling abroad. How can the internet be something that promotes European identity – or do we need to do that offline?
Kruse: Tough question! It really depends on what is digital and what is the internet, that’s really a huge space. Even all these digital people eventually do conferences and offline meetings.

Juncker touched on the idea of transnational MEPs, meaning you’d be able to vote not just for a Bulgarian or a German MEP, but for someone from another member state. Is this something that has an appeal?
Slavkova: Sure. This all has to do with the basic question: how close is the EU to the European citizenry, and how much do they understand the impact that the EU has on their daily life? So it all boils down to education.
I know this sounds like a cliché, but if people do not know how the EU impacts their life, there is very little incentive to go and vote for members of parliament from your own national context, let alone for someone from a different country. It’s like Daniel said: there is a notion of travel and the so-called Easyjet or ERASMUS generation, those who have the experience of having been real EU citizens. They were born here, studied there, then had a job maybe somewhere else. Maybe they would be the target group of a transnational list, or even a new party. I know that there is currently a new party in the making called Vox which is kind of based on that idea.
However, while I admire the great optimism of Juncker, I don’t think we’re done with the reflection phase. A lot of politicians think that because we didn’t choose a far-right government in the Netherlands, or a far-right president in Austria, or Le Pen in France, that we’re basically done with that. But the underlying dynamics of what we now call “populism” and citizens’ disenchantment with politics have been there for a while. People were protesting before they voted for populists.
It’s too early to immediately think of solutions. I would rather we had time to reflect and include the citizens in this conversation to see if they are really tired of hearing the same things from both left and right and not getting any of the results they wanted. And they should feel empowered to become part of the discussion. I think it’s too early to talk about pan-European lists for the EUP.

Couldn’t it be that the EU doesn’t take this chance to really get moving, maybe next time round populists will win in other countries?
Slavkova: Basically, democracies really fail when they want too little of their citizens. That’s both a subjective and an objective observation from my work. I really think that it’s the right time to engage in a conversation with citizens. And I know that this is not easy because I’m doing it! But it has to be done.

Who would organize or spur these processes?
Slavkova: In terms of the EU funds for the non-governmental sector, there is hardly any support for democracy programs within its borders. As an organization that does democracy support and works for the sake of democracy consolidation, there is no way for me to get support from the EU unless I twist the organization to fit the criteria.
This is a problem. For way too long we’ve thought that democracy is consolidated in the EU member states, both old and new. That’s always been the narrative – once you gain access to the club, you’re a democracy. But as we’ve seen over the past few years, this is not the case. And if there’s no support for this type of work, especially in the non-governmental sector, what are we supposed to do? I know there are trendy topics, different digital tools and instruments and ways to enrich democracy through that, but we can’t all do the same thing; if refugees are now the topic of the day, we can’t all start doing this. There is a need to get in touch with people, to talk to them on a very basic, local level.

You’re talking about the role the EU can play in local education – what responsibility do national governments have to contribute to that?
Slavkova: I think as big a responsibility, if not bigger. If you make a division of labor, maybe the EU should focus on engaging people in a conversation about the EU itself, whereas national capitals can engage with their citizens both on that topic and the role of the member states in the EU, and also why democracy is best.

Is democracy so safely anchored in Germany and maybe other western European nations that we don’t have that problem?
Slavkova: Oh, I think that we have problems everywhere. If we did not, we wouldn’t have parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), for instance, or Le Pen, or others. As I was saying, the fact that Macron won in France does not mean that the underlying dynamics that made people vote for Le Pen are gone.
And it’s also wrong to think about these things in the old schemes of rural vs. urban, or well-educated vs. uneducated, or blue-collar vs. white-collar. You see this among the voters of the AfD; they’re not only in Eastern Germany, as we had originally thought, but they’re also in Western Germany, in rather wealthy regions. That’s what I was saying; I admire the job of Juncker, but when you listen to him saying, “It’s been enough reflection, it’s time for action,” I don’t think there’s been enough reflection at all. I can’t advocate enough for conversations with the citizens.

Kruse: I’m still thinking about the question three questions before, about transnational voting. On a structural level I would say “Of course,” because it seems that the EU decisions impact every citizen, on the national level as well. So on the one hand, sure, people should be able to vote more directly on transnational MEPs.
But the underlying problem is that politics is about distributing your power to people you barely know. I always find it a bit weird that when an election is coming up and local candidates pop up on the streets, and I hardly known any of them, and I wonder why I’m not in touch with these people the rest of the year. Why don’t they do marketing? Why do I know everything about Merkel, who I never reach and can never influence, and hardly anything about these local guys?
So on the one hand it’s important that we see these international talking heads and have the chance to vote for them, but I think a lot of opportunity lies in more local politics and being proactive about that, giving people back a sense of influence. Influencing their neighborhood, their small towns, or their districts in larger cities like Berlin, where I’m living. That’s under the radar I think.

So I take it you agree with Louisa, basically – this is a time for more reflection, not actually the time for rushing ahead.
Kruse: Yeah; that fits the process of our camp. There are lots of new pro-European “democracy startups,” meetings, round tables, and such, so everyone’s talking about it. The threat has made many more people talk about the EU and its future. But it’s maybe not the best thing to immediately leap into action, anxiety, stress, and panic. Now that we have this “democratic buffer” with Macron in France, instead of Le Pen, we might take some time to deepen the dialogue and really figure out how to get better at this participation process, and what politics really means to us.
Slavkova: Yes! Nothing better than consensus.

The post European Encounters: “There Hasn’t Been Enough Reflection” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

When polls close in Germany’s federal election later this month, outsiders will need the patience of Job, a color-coded chart, and a well-thumbed acronym lexicon to survive the months until Christmas. Why? Because, as German political pundits never tire of telling us, “Nach der Wahl ist vor der Wahl”: after the election is before the election.

When 61 million German voters are called to cast their votes on September 24, it is unlikely that one party will emerge with an absolute majority. After polls close at 6 pm, coalition horse-trading will begin, a ritualized veil dance of jargon, colors, and acronyms that is not for the faint-hearted.

For instance, during eight of her twelve years in power, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been the queen of the GroKo – a grand coalition or “Große Koalition”, with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). The word first appeared in DIE ZEIT weekly in 1969, in an article about post-war Germany’s first such alliance. After four decades in hibernation, GroKo was dusted off as a handy acronym in the Twitter age and voted Germany’s word of the year 2013 – when Merkel agreed her second such arrangement.

After two spins on the Berlin merry-go-round since 2005, however, Berlin’s GroKo seems a no-go for the next term. Merkel’s CDU are nearing their last election result of 41 percent while the SPD is in a sorry state. Treading water at a disastrous 24 percent in polls, SPD leader Martin Schulz is trapped in a political Groundhog Day: the third SPD man who has failed to land a blow on his unideological rival.

So if there’s no GroKo, what then? Please reach for your color charts. As in many countries, each German political party has traditional colors. And the most likely GroKo alternative in Berlin is Schwarz-Gelb – Black-Yellow. More commonly associated with German soccer club Borussia Dortmund or a bumblebee (hence some English commentators talk of a “bumblebee coalition”), the colors are also political: black for Merkel’s CDU and yellow for the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Though a small junior partner, the FDP managed to carry the weighty Helmut Kohl in power for 16 years until 1998. It got another crack at power with Merkel in 2009 but stumbled in office, its leader Guido Westerwelle dismissed by Bavarian coalition allies as a Leichtmatrose or “lightweight” – ready to be blown over by a strong political gale. Blown onto the rocks outside the Bundestag in 2013, the good ship FPD has been repaired and refloated by a new captain, Christian Lindner. He is promising a return to traditional pro-business policies on those two certainties of politics: debt and taxes.

But if, as is likely, more parties board the next Bundestag – from four to six, according to polls – Merkel may need a three-way coalition for a majority.

A possible constellation is the so-called “Jamaika-Option,” mirroring the island’s black, yellow, and green flag. Bringing into office the Green Party – her CDU’s one-time mortal enemy – would be a novelty for Merkel. And the Jamaika-Option has some charm, if it comes to pass. The term dates from the 1980s but came into popular use after the 2005 election as a potential alternative to Merkel’s first grand coalition.

Though still untested at national level, the first state Jamaika coalition began work in 2009 in southwest Saarland, followed by a new attempt this year in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. Given the FDP’s business sense and the Greens’, well, greenness, state premier Daniel Günther saying his alliance “unites ecology and economy.”

The main problem with Jamaika – apart from the FDP and Greens probably scratching each others’ eyes out – is the imagery it conjures up in the minds of German photo editors – politicians with fake tans, photoshopped dreadlocks and joints. This, of course, says more about their understanding of the Caribbean island than anything else. (Former Green leader and foreign minister Joschka Fischer takes part of the blame, though. When he allegedly heard the term first on election night in 2005, he couldn’t image his CDU colleagues “with reggae locks and blunts.”)

A final coalition term to keep in mind is the “Ampel” or traffic light. That is a three-way coalition lead by the SPD (red), with the Liberals (yellow) and the Greens.  Sometimes referred to as the “Senegal” option, the SPD-FDP-Green combination has been popular in federal states and was on the table for two minutes after the 2009 federal election. Then Guido Westerwelle – rising above the Leichtmatrose slight – switched off the “Ampel” light and got into bed with Merkel.

So now you know your GroKo, Jamaica, Ampel, and Schwarz-Gelb options, which is most likely after the election?

The easy answer: it’s difficult to say. First, the arrival of a sixth party into the Bundestag – the far-right Alternative für Deutschland – will cause a radical reworking of coalition arithmetic.

A second reason is the most complicated word in the German political lexicon: Überhangmandat. Translated directly as “excess mandate,” this is a peculiarity arising from Germany’s two-vote  system. With their first vote, Germans pick a direct constituency candidate; with their second vote they choose a party, which then divides up seats to MPs on its own list. The second vote determines how many seats each party gets in the new Bundestag. But an MP elected via the first, direct vote is entitled to take their seat regardless of whether or not the party’s second vote share entitles them to it.

The outgoing parliament had four such seats, all for the CDU, but more additional seats are likely in the next Bundestag because of new procedures to compensate other parties. Complicated just got abstruse.

These complications mean that it takes time after the election for anything to happen. Immediately after the poll, when post-election denial gives way to Realpolitik, parties abandon their pre-election coalition promises and get down to the hard-to-get phase. Referred to in political circles as “Sondierungsgespräche” or exploratory talks, this is a complicated mating ritual only seen in the captivity of the Reichstag building every four years.

As no one knows how many seats will be in the new Bundestag, all political colors, synonyms, and acronyms will remain in play in Berlin until a new coalition emerges. And judging by the last election, after the September 24 poll, there won’t be new working coalition until the advent lights are up. Just remember: a German government is for four years, not just for Christmas.

The post Words Don’t Come Easy: GroKo, Jamaika, & Co. appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork: © Dominik Herrmann

Long before she became chancellor, Angela Merkel thought about how important it was for a politician to know when it was time to leave politics. This was in 1998, and Merkel had just witnessed how Helmut Kohl’s electoral defeat put an ignominious end to his 16-year chancellorship. She reasoned that she never wanted to leave politics as a lame duck herself. Ever since, she has considered an exit on her own terms the ideal end to a successful political career.

The chancellor’s hesitation to confirm her candidacy in the fall of last year was likely connected to that hope. She was aware of the fact that every missed chance to determine the end of her career herself reduces the chances that she will be able to at all. At the same time, given Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Brexit, there has hardly been a worse time for the most experienced and powerful European head of state to leave the stage.

Politicians who intend to stay in office as long as they are able have no need to consider their succession, but one who would determine her own exit must. Yet since her surprising rise to the top of the CDU in the year 2000, Merkel has been too busy warding off her intra-party challengers to pay any attention to who might come after her. Early on, she surrounded herself with a close circle of trusted advisers – Peter Altmaier, Ronald Pofalla, Hermann Gröhe – but these were sworn to unconditionally defend Merkel’s chancellorship rather than advance their own prospects. It may be a coincidence, but the chancellor removed the only person who showed the ambition and talent to one day inherit her position – Norbert Röttgen – in 2012. No wonder that in 2017, no one at the top of the CDU or within the administration presents him- or herself as an obvious alternative.

Angela Merkel has announced that she will run once more this fall for a full legislative period. Assuming she is successful, that leaves her four years to establish a successor. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble would have been an obvious choice during the refugee crisis.  In the turbulent period at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, he might have seemed like an anchor of stability if Merkel had fallen over her controversial management of the situation. But if she has the chance to hand over power on her own terms in four years, Schäuble will be nearly eighty, too old for serious consideration.

The Merkel Generation

The situation is somewhat different with the second name that has cropped up in recent years: Ursula von der Leyen. The 59-year-old has gone out of her way to play down any ambitions of her own. She has said that “a generation only needs one chancellor,” making it clear that in her case, it is Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Berlin politicians and observers are firmly convinced that not only, von der Leyen can easily imagine herself as Merkel’s successor, but that she also believes herself to already have the skills necessary for the top job.

A doctor by training, von der Leyen made her first appearance in national politics in 2004. Since then, she has headed three federal offices: the ministry for women and family and the ministry for labor and social affairs in addition to her current post at defense. Her foreign policy credentials may also put her ahead of the competition. During the refugee crisis, von der Leyen was one of Merkel’s most visible and loyal defenders – and yet she is also one of the very few CDU politicians who have openly fought with the chancellor, and done so as an equal.

Clearly, von der Leyen is different from the chancellor.  She is a politician who is willing to eloquently and forcefully pursue her projects. But this trait has not only helped her become one of Germany’s most visible political actors; it has also hurt her in the CDU. Like Merkel, she is a modernizer. But where Merkel mostly declines to spell out her plans, implementing them either bit by bit or in sudden bursts, von der Leyen represents her positions openly and is happy to engage in public debate. This has led the party to direct its criticism of her efforts to modernize the military, for example, toward von der Leyen rather than the chancellor herself. This is one reason for the obvious distance between the defense minister and her party, and a possible obstacle to any future in the chancellery.

Respected, Not Revered

Within her party, Merkel is one of the most respected politicians. But unlike Helmut Kohl, she is hardly a revered leader. For twelve years now, she has guaranteed that the party remained in power, but she did so by pragmatically incorporating the shifts of a changing society rather than directing them according to the preferences of the Christian Democrats. Merkel’s twelve years in office have thus been accompanied by a certain lack of enthusiasm from her own party, which cannot escape the feeling that it has traded its values for power. This poses a challenge as well as an opportunity for her successor: any aspiring candidate who promises to pay more heed to the party’s vision should have a fairly low bar to clear.

The CDU politician currently pursuing this strategy most avidly is Jens Spahn. This ambitious young politician has become a beacon of hope to those who want the CDU to return to its conservative, fiscally liberal profile. Spahn is only 37 but has already been in the Bundestag for 15 years. He is highly driven: already in 2013, after the last national election, he saw himself as destined for a position in the cabinet. When he did not get it, he fought a very public battle for a place on the CDU executive committee, the party’s most powerful body. Schäuble himself took him under his wing as his “parliamentary state secretary” at the finance ministry. While this is not a particularly important office in government, Spahn has nevertheless become one of the most well-known and influential CDU politicians. In a party that avoids public debate, he will publicly contradict Merkel and turn such attacks into his personal brand. For some time now, he has been on the rather short list of politicians credited with the clout to succeed her.

Similar to Spahn, Julia Klöckner set herself apart from Merkel during the 2015–16 refugee crisis. Ever since, she has made discomfort with Islam into her theme. Had she won the 2016 state election in Rheinland-Pfalz, she would be the favorite to succeed Merkel today. She did not win, but she still isn’t out of the running. As deputy party head, Klöckner has given the CDU a youthful, friendly face. She also offers something to the long-disappointed Christian Democrats who are interested in tradition and homeland without playing exclusively to the party’s conservative wing or indulging in the bitterness that sometimes characterizes Spahn. She is just as ambitious, but manages to conceal her aspirations with a certain winning charm. For a party that experienced the Kohl-Merkel transition as a loss of political orientation, she represents an emotional homecoming.

Still, Klöckner has headed neither a federal ministry nor a state government. She is seen as inexperienced and cannot rely on charisma alone to sweep her into the chancellor’s office. If Merkel were to offer her a cabinet post in the future, she’d become one of the most promising candidates.

A Dark Horse

Given the current office holder, it is fitting that the politician with the best chance of succeeding is not the ever-present Ursula von der Leyen, the ultra-ambitious Jens Spahn, or the happy warrior Julia Klöckner. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer may be a dark horse, but she resembles the current chancellor the closest. Like Merkel, she is an unpretentious, pragmatic, technocrat who does not give the appearance of using politics as a stage to realize her personal ambitions. And that is not the only reason why the minister president of the tiny state of Saarland actually stands a chance of becoming the next chancellor: she is one of Merkel’s most unquestioningly loyal followers, has pursued Merkel’s modernization plans, and supported the chancellor unequivocally during the refugee crisis. She has also proven her ability to exercise power: in Saarland, against the chancellor’s wishes, she broke up the CDU, Green, and FDP coalition, saying that the FDP was not sufficiently serious to be a real partner. Unlike Spahn, who is inclined toward economic liberalism, Kramp-Karrenbauer stands for a CDU anchored in the social welfare economy. She won the most recent election in her state by an unexpectedly wide margin. This was the beginning of a series of disappointments for Martin Schulz, who was to be the SPD’s savior in September’s federal elections.

For each of the potential successors, it would be extremely helpful if the chancellor gave them the chance to build a stronger profile in office – allowing them to take the reins a year before the next election, for example. But Merkel has made it clear that she wants to fulfill another full four-year term if she is re-elected later tnis month. So there will likely be a piecemeal shift in power rather than a single dramatic change. Kramp-Karrenbauer, for example, could take over the job of party chief in the middle of the legislative period which would give her a strong claim to the top job when the next campaign season begins.

Merkel, however, has always believed that her predecessor Gerhard Schröder made a serious mistake when he gave up the office of SPD chief during his chancellorship as this was seen as a clear sign of political defeat. Merkel will not make the same error; she will likely hand over the reins of the party only as a signal of an upcoming transition, and only when she is ready. It would be the first step in the final farewell that she has contemplated for two decades.

But Merkel also knows that in politics, little goes according to plan. Few chancellors have managed to determine their own exit, and the plans of those who would become chancellor in their place are rarely more successful. It was the same after Kohl was voted out, when many in the CDU hoped their own fortunes would rise, only to see their ambitions dashed. In the end, it was Merkel who rose to power, someone no one had on their radar in 1998. And who knows – history could repeat itself.

The post Close-Up: Merkel’s Heirs appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Cover artwork: © Mitch Blunt

Dear Chancellor X,

Outgoing Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries is fond of saying: “In the age of the Internet of Things, the United States has the Internet. Europe has the things.” It is true that the top four publicly traded US companies – Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon – are all tech companies. But the largest German companies – Daimler, Volkswagen, BMW, Siemens, and Bayer – are tech companies, too. They just don’t act like it.

Digital policy featured prominently in all the parties’ manifestos, including yours. Germany has become more sophisticated in thinking about tech policy, moving beyond a focus on data protection toward areas like the industrial Internet, innovation, the sharing economy, and competition law. Your government will have the chance to position Germany as a global leader in international digital policy. Here are five policies that – among others – could help you do so:

Start with investment in digital infrastructure. Every party platform –  even the AfD – states that German broadband must be significantly improved to ensure future competitiveness. Presently, Germany ranks 26th in OECD broadband, behind Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia among others – not a good place.

Create a digital ministry that unites tall the relevant responsibilities and budgets of the economy, interior, and transportation ministries. Bolster Bundestag digital literacy. Balance the interests of incumbent industries like telecoms or publishing houses and startups. Focus financial resources in efforts to advance university research; attract and retain talent and deepen the European market.

Get behind the EU’s Digital Single Market project. The EU’s ambitious project to add open, free, secure movement of data as a fifth freedom to the four defining areas of goods, services, capital, and labor will be a precondition to a 21st century European single market. Germany has been a fair-weather partner in this ambitious project. Without German backing, it will not succeed. Provide the lift to the DSM starting at the Tallinn Summit on September 29. Immediately launch a joint Franco-German R&D and policy initiative to drive European AI. With the US, work within the EU to re-launch the Transatlantic Economic Council, but emphasize the importance of different philosophies of tech regulation, joint impact assessments on regulation, and increased usage of review clauses.

Shape global Internet policy with an eye to autocratic states. Germany’s digital policy debate has been inward-looking, with senior officials like Sigmar Gabriel speaking about “digital sovereignty” and the expansion of hate speech. German rhetoric and policy has often been used to give cover to authoritarian regimes in Russia and China. Both are eying German definitions of data localization, data protection, and the Maas Law as templates to limit Internet freedom at home. Embed German digital policy-making within an international context.

Lead on defining limitations for the use of artificial intelligence in warfare. Countries like Russia, China, and the United States are already thinking about lethal autonomous weapons; swarm drones; supercharged AI surveillance; and hyper-sophisticated fake information like forged videos and interactive electronic communication. Germany and Europe can lead on creating international law governing the use of AI in war. Beyond that, Germany should continue to build military and civilian cybersecurity policy around encryption, hack-back capabilities, resilience, recruitment, and critical infrastructure protection at state, federal, and European levels.

The post What Germany Needs to Do Next … On Digitalization appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Cover artwork: © Mitch Blunt

Dear Mr. or Ms. Chancellor,

Your new government is likely to have considerable political clout in the Ukraine conflict. While US foreign policy remains in relative disarray and France is led by an inexperienced president, Berlin could assume a leading role in the diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel (know her?), Berlin was already in a strong position. But your government should step up the pressure to find a solution both the government in Kiev and the Kremlin can live with. Here are a few pointers:

Stick to the Minsk Agreement.  Yes, it has proven tricky to implement, but it is the only agreement currently in existence. Any attempt to renege or replace it risks a dangerous hiatus and would give both sides incentives to act irresponsibly.

Step up the pressure on both Kiev and Moscow to implement said agreement. The longer non-implementation lasts, the higher the risk of frustrated players calling for a military solution.
Keep the United States involved. This won’t be easy given the Trump administration’s erratic foreign policy record. Make it clear to Washington that arms deliveries to Ukraine will only make matters worse.
Be honest about NATO. The possibility of Ukraine joining the US-led alliance was a key motivation for Moscow to annex Crimea and destabilize the Donbass. Now the Ukrainian public deserves to know that the West is not ready to embrace a new NATO member facing the real threat of a Russian invasion. Georgia is a point in case.

Do not ease sanctions against Russia unless there is substantial progress. In fact be prepared to introduce new sanctions. Moscow is responsible for igniting the conflict and keeps adding fuel to the fire, be it by sending arms and fighters or by spreading anti-Ukrainian sentiment via state TV. The international community (read: the West) must signal that it does not tolerate the violation of borders and meddling in sovereign states’ internal affairs.

Do more to explain the sanctions policies to domestic audiences and EU partners. Economic sanctions can be extremely powerful because the West, if it stands united, is far stronger than Russia. President Vladimir Putin clearly understands this, unlike some in the West.

Keep up the pressure on Kiev to carry out reforms and root out corruption. This is not only necessary to honor the agreements with the EU, but also a crucial part of any solution to the conflict with Russia.

Ukraine is undoubtedly the victim of Russian aggression, but it nevertheless bears some responsibility for the ease with which Moscow won control over Crimea and parts of Donbass. Ukrainian officials like to claim that people will side with Kiev as soon as they stop watching Russian TV, but this is by no means a given. Only a prosperous and stable Ukraine can become an attractive alternative to Russia’s “Russky Mir” Soviet nostalgia.

Don’t let the West be held hostage to Ukrainian demands. An effective peacekeeping force would require vast resources, while free elections in the Donbass are impossible as long as the pro-Russian military dictatorships disguised as “people’s republics” are in place.

Develop new recipes against Moscow’s ongoing propaganda campaign. While talk of “hybrid war” is often vastly exaggerated, Russian state media continues to poison the hearts and minds of audiences in Russia and (eastern) Ukraine.  Foreign news outlets and recently created fact-checking and anti-fake news websites tend not to reach those audiences. Foreign governments would do better supporting home-grown critical media outlets like Russia’s Dozhd TV or Ukraine’s Novosti Donbassa.

The post What Germany Needs to Do Next … On Ukraine appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

With just weeks to go until federal elections, Germany is eerily quiet. No heated debates here; not even a clash of personalities that could help liven up what must be one of the most boring campaigns ever. Merkel’s CDU/CSU enjoys a comfortable lead, but that is more due to the chancellor’s long-lasting popularity than a deft campaign strategy. In fact, all of Germany’s major parties appear to be struggling to get voters interested.

Merkel’s main contender, Martin Schulz of the Social Democrats (SPD), put social justice at the center of his platform when he announced his candidacy earlier this year. It was February, and Schulz’s Robin Hood image jolted the country from its winter slumber. He vowed to make Germany fairer and more equal, and his numbers soared in opinion polls. It appeared, ever so briefly, that Merkel had cause for concern.

Since then, however, Schulz and the SPD have crashed back down to earth, now polling at a paltry 24 percent – despite the fact that the issue of inequality actually does appear to resonate deeply with voters. A recent survey by the British pollsters YouGov found that 79 percent of Germans perceive a lack of social justice.

That may appear incongruous. Germany is indeed Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful nation. Yet numerous studies have shown that the country has also witnessed a rise in poverty and inequality, particularly among at-risk groups like single parents, the elderly, and the long-term unemployed. “I do not think the issue of social justice is unimportant,” said Holger Geissler, head of research at YouGov Germany. “But the problem is that everyone has a different understanding of it.”

The YouGov study indicates that Schulz may have cast his net too wide. Social justice can easily be fragmentized into smaller issues – health insurance, pensions, or education, for example. These issues tend to resonate only with the social group directly connected or affected, like senior citizens or parents of young children. “What the SPD considers to be social justice is simply not a topic,” said Geissler.

It is not the only issue to fall flat on this summer’s campaign trail. After the wave of populism that swept across Europe last year and the recent elections in France, taking a stand on the European Union was en vogue: Being pro-Europe meant standing for shared values increasingly under threat. Yet most Germans are already pro-Europe, says Geissler, and blank platitudes about European solidarity sound out of touch.

“Europe is not an election-defining topic, but that was already obvious two years ago,” he said. “So it is rather surprising that both the CDU and SPD are campaigning with posters on Europe – I did not expect that.”

The Issues Left Unspoken?

Only the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany has continued to espouse an anti-EU platform. The AfD was founded in 2013 at the height of the eurozone debt crisis in protest against Brussels’ multi-billion euro bailout packages for Greece. But two years ago, the party began shifting decidedly to the far right, and European policy faded to the background. The 2015 refugee crisis was a driving factor behind the AfD’s paradigm shift, and today the party bases its appeal on anti-immigration and law-and-order issues.

Germany’s mainstream parties, on the other hand, appear to be downplaying those issues. They seem well aware that migration and domestic security are hot-button issues among voters, but they are strategically avoiding discourse that might inflame the public.

The CDU has touched on security in its election billboards now plastered on light poles and intersections across the country. One such poster pictures two police officers above the words: “Denen den Rücken stärken, die für uns stark sind” (Standing up for those who are strong for us). The conservatives’ slogan for the 2017 election is: “Für ein Deutschland, in dem wir gut und gerne leben” (For a Germany where we live well and enjoy living) – accompanied by the somewhat unfortunate hashtag #fedidwgugl. According to Peter Tauber, the CDU’s general secretary, living well stands for jobs and prosperity, and enjoying living means solidarity, order, and security.

Yet beyond the posters – and the reassuring images of Chancellor Merkel, the ultimate safe pair of hands – domestic security has remained conspicuously absent, particularly as European partners like Spain and the United Kingdom have been hit by terror.

“Established parties like the CDU and SPD won’t lead with it because if domestic security would play a stronger role, the AfD would profit,” Geissler said. “For the AfD, it is about playing on voters’ fears over foreign infiltration, security, poverty among seniors and pensions.” Take one of the AfD’s more notorious campaign posters, featuring two bikini-clad women and the words:  “Burkas? Wir stehen auf Bikinis” (Burkas? We prefer bikinis).

More than a million refugees and migrants have entered Germany over the past two years. Merkel has scrambled to change her original open-door policy, pushing through legislation to deport failed asylum seekers, tighten family reunification laws and, most significantly, striking deals with governments like Turkey, Morocco, and Egypt to stem the flow of migrants. Yet it was Merkel’s government – the CDU/CSU and junior coalition partner SPD – that in 2015 allowed opened Germany’s borders to refugees in the first place.

The number of new arrivals has fallen steeply, but the mainstream parties in Germany might be concerned that the AfD would exploit this vulnerability. “That is why the issue of migration has been handled rather defensively,” said Geissler. “This is a topic that has moved a lot of people two years ago and it would be a huge issue if another influx happened again.”
2013 All Over Again?

And then there are issues where parties seem to lack the confidence to address voter concerns. Take digitalization, says Geissler, a major theme in the 2013 parliamentary elections.
That summer, Germany was stunned by revelations of the NSA’s global surveillance program PRISM. Even Merkel’s own phone had been tapped. Berlin appeared weak and powerless. In the aftermath, Merkel was widely mocked then for referring to the Internet as “Neuland,” or uncharted territory.

Since then, the threat of cyberattacks has grown considerably, particularly at the hands of Russia. The Bundestag already experienced a mass hack of its own in 2015, and there are widespread fears that data from that hack will be leaked ahead of this year’s vote to influence the outcome.

Still, not much appears to have changed, according to Geissler, and cyber security certainly has not emerged as a major topic on this year’s campaign trail. “I get a sense that citizens are not getting any answers from politicians at the moment, maybe because politicians do not know how to handle the issue themselves,” he said.

Crucial Final Weeks

The disconnect with voters aside, Germany’s parties are now on the home stretch. The final weeks before the election are crucial in convincing the electorate of their political agenda, particularly when many voters have indicated they are undecided. That could mean that fewer voters end up going to the polls. Just over 71 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the last federal elections, one of the lowest turnouts in the country’s post-war history.

But the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) says it has also witnessed a different trend. The agency offers a vast array of material on the German government, the election system, and the parties. Daniel Kraft, a spokesman for the bpb, says their printed materials in basic language were sold out immediately this year, forcing the agency to issue reprints ahead of the elections.

“We have witnessed a high demand for information that explains our political system and the election itself in basic language,” he said. Kraft added that very few voters actually read through the individual parties’ programs. Instead, they turn to the bpb’s massively popular Wahl-O-Mat, an interactive election tool that guides users through a series of questions and analyses which party best represents the users’ own positions.

“We do nothing else but read the party programs and prepare them in a way that you can compare your own political views with those of the parties. That is the core idea of civic education, and we are realizing how demand for that is increasing.”

The Wahl-O-Mat went online on August 30, just weeks ahead of the vote, and not a moment too soon. A study from the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research says nearly half of all Germans still do not know which party they will select. And that gives Merkel’s opponents some reason for hope.

The post The Great Disconnect appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Schlepping up and down a ten-story apartment building to distribute flyers may not feel like the digital revolution. Yet Germany’s biggest political parties have revived door-to-door campaigning as a central part of their efforts at tech-driven strategies this year. They hope new mobile apps will help them knock on the right doors to get their supporters to the polls.

Campaigners are logging not just miles as they trek from home to home, but also data. The information they are collecting could change the future of campaigning, and make September’s federal election the last of its kind. Both of Germany’s two largest parties, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD), are employing new phone apps to help identify supporters as well as lay the groundwork for more focused voter-targeting in future elections.

The CDU has led the charge with an app called Connect17 that allows volunteers to add demographic information about whomever answers the door. The SPD has tried to catch the tech wave with its own initiative, Kampa17.

In Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood, 20-year-old Jonathan Packroff from the Kampa17 team joined volunteers clad in red shirts to ring bells in a gray, cement-block housing development dating back to Berlin’s communist past. The SPD’s local candidate for the neighborhood, Eva Högl, offered a pep talk before they set out in pairs, preparing to tick boxes about who opens the door and what matters to them most.
Packroff said he has worked many traditional SPD events in the past, manning information stands outside supermarkets, for example. But he had never gone straight to voters’ doors. “This year everyone is doing it,” he said. He and his partner nervously discussed what to do about the buzzer to get into the building; how to pitch over an intercom had not been covered in their briefing.

Both the CDU and SPD say their goal is to make brief, in-person contact with potential supporters rather than engage in policy discussions or change minds. Their mobile platforms help guide volunteers through conversations intended to remind people to show up at the ballot box on election day. The apps also help the parties glean information about voter preferences.

The CDU’s Connect17 is widely seen as the gold standard in campaign apps. After volunteers knock on doors and speak to residents, they record information about their encounters at specific addresses. They then use the app to log residents’ gender, estimated age, and how amenable they are to being solicited by the CDU. The last, subjective rating is communicated back to headquarters using a frowning, neutral, or smiling face.

Still Far Behind US Campaigns

Connect17 has also gamified campaigning. Volunteers win points each time they add demographic information to the app, with the most dedicated rising to the top of designated leaderboards. They can boost their scores by sharing party-related news on their personal social media accounts as well. The SPD’s platform, meanwhile, is more focused on identifying which policies are most important for voters. The Kampa17 website provides a series of questions to ask voters during door-to-door campaigns, including how they prioritize issues such as education, healthcare, or the economy.

For both parties, the apps help steer campaigners toward streets where they might find pockets of support. Before using data to identify these neighborhoods, campaigners ran the risk of antagonizing – and potentially mobilizing – opponents by showing up on their doorstep to remind them to vote. Now, the parties can build a far more detailed database for their headquarters.

Many in Germany’s political circles admired US President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential bid as a model for how to run a successful campaign using data to target voters in key areas. Nearly a decade later, German campaigns are still far behind the United States in this regard. Privacy laws prevent campaigns from purchasing the same detailed information on voter behavior that is available in the US. The public data they have cobbled together is still relatively scant, and German data firms lack experience in how to best employ it.

“There are not that many resources to pull from for the same kind of smart, targeted approach that you could do in the US,” said Julius van de Laar, a political consultant who has worked on campaigns for both Obama and at the national level in Germany.

Strict Spending Limits

Germany is playing according to a different set of rules when it comes to money and time; smaller budgets and a shorter campaign cycle make it a far less comprehensive effort than the American example.

German elections are strictly limited by finance laws, with the biggest parties allowed to spend roughly €20 million each on their entire campaign. By comparison, the much-lauded wizardry of Obama’s 2012 micro-targeting was part of an overall campaign that cost $775 million (€650 million). The timeframe is also more limited in Germany, with just six weeks of campaigning compared to at least a year in America.

Simon Hegelich, Professor of Political Data Science at the Technical University of Munich, has studied how campaigns use data in their canvassing. He says parties are forced to use untestable models based on publicly available information as household level information is not available due to privacy laws. Despite this limitation, he thinks the two main parties’ new campaign methods could help solve at least one of their problems.

“If parties are going door-to-door with an app in their hand and they store data in the app, they can build their own database for micro-targeting,” he said. “This is the year that we’ll see the last traditional campaign in Germany. Every party is gathering experience with these tools now and a lot of things will change.”

Still, all the micro-targeting in the world will not help a campaign season that stretches over a six-week period in late summer. Despite knocking on dozens of strategically-selected doors on a weekday afternoon in August, SPD campaigners in Berlin found that almost nobody was home.

The handful of residents who did answer all offered the same emphatic response: “Nein, danke.”

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© REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

In the German campaign, economic issues have been notable so far by their absence. Do you think they’re being discussed enough? Economic issues play a big role in an indirect way. Yes, Germany’s economy is doing well, the employment rate is very high, and many have enjoyed wage increases over the past few years. All this explains why topics like unemployment, growth, and income are on the back burner. But there are important indirect links to other topics, as inequality and social justice are indeed big issues. For instance, both the Social Democrats (SPD) and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) have put forward proposals on lowering the income tax burden by €15 billion with different constituencies in mind. In other words, economic issues aren’t unimportant, they just manifest themselves in a different way.

Do the parties differ much in their approach, or are economic affairs another example of Germany’s consensus politics? There has been a high degree of consensus in German politics over the last few decades, and the differences between the major parties are relatively small. Divisions are much starker on issues like migration, questions of identity, family values – and I’m not just talking about the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) here, which obviously is very anti-immigration, very anti-foreigner.

Germany is one of the richest countries in Europe, but as you and others have pointed out in the past, we are witnessing rising poverty, especially in the lower-income sector. There certainly is a widespread feeling that not everyone has benefited from Germany’s positive development to the same extent, and some have not benefited at all.

Is it a feeling or a fact? Both. Regarding the factual basis, there is a debate among economists, with some saying: “More people have jobs today, so everything is fine.” Personally, I take a more critical view. If you look at the bottom 40 percent of income earners, their wages in real terms today are lower than in 1995. In other words, the bottom 40 percent have not benefited in terms of income. Yes, lately there have been increases, but if you take a longer view, there are clear signs that they’ve been excluded. And people feel that. In polls, 70 percent say they consider social and economic inequality to be too large. This view is widely shared even by people who consider themselves comfortable economically, but they see inequality around them and say: “It has risen too much.” Politicians should address that. Otherwise, the polarization of society will continue.

How? The most serious challenge is to ensure more equal opportunities for people, which has a lot to do with education and qualification. But we also see that the number of people in “atypical employment” – those who are working full-time or part-time at low wages – has increased markedly. Statistically, more than one in five people is in atypical employment. Qualification is the key here. There are more than one million vacancies in the German job market, but mostly for the well-qualified. Therefore, the next government should focus on getting people into the labor market, on deregulating the services sector to improve competition, and on abolishing unfair competitive advantages for a few privileged groups.

Whom do you have in mind? In the German services sector there are many who enjoy protection, from lawyers to real estate agents to pharmacists – something that has been criticized for years by the European Commission, by the OECD, by the IMF, by our own DIW research institute. This is largely about abolishing privileges so that less advantaged groups are also given a fair chance to compete, find jobs and have good incomes. Protectionism hampers competition, hurts economic performance, and ultimately lowers welfare for everyone.

The coming technological changes and the increase in automation will be leading to significant job loss. Do you think German politicians are even beginning to prepare for this shift in the labor market? The first priority is to improve the education system, to have better qualified people to participate in and benefit from digitalization. Secondly, as you say, technological change is a key driver. Attempting to restrict technological change would be the wrong answer as it would fail. Rather we need to embrace technological change as the catalyst for creating new jobs. But we’re not doing very well in this area. Germany is very good at old, traditional industrial manufacturing, but very poor in the really promising fields, in information and communication technologies, where US companies are leading in almost every area, followed by Asian companies from Korea and Japan. The big challenge is how to embrace digitalization, how to improve investment, how to help start-up companies develop ideas and transform their business models. We need to further improve German research and development, in particular in the sectors of the future. That is of the highest priority. The government is doing too little. If you look at digital infrastructure, Germany’s is very poor – one of the worst digital fiber-optics infrastructures in the Western world – and that certainly will be an impediment to growth.

Is Chancellor Merkel pointing to the size of the challenge when she suddenly talks about the end of the combustion engine? Yes, in a way. This transformation is very hard to achieve, because the German export companies, above all automobile companies, have been doing very well. But in five, ten, fifteen years their current business model will be massively under threat. From autonomous driving to electro-mobility, German car manufacturers aren’t well equipped to drive those changes, and the next government urgently needs to prepare the economy by providing a first-class infrastructure and by setting the right regulatory framework, for instance by pushing electro-mobility.

What should be the new government’s priority at the European level? Merkel’s and Wolfgang Schäuble’s names are closely linked to “austerity” policies, even though the term is often misleadingly used. The German government needs to understand that all of the issues mentioned earlier – digitalization, infrastructure, trade – those are all European issues. In the past Berlin has been doing things too much on its own – there’ve been too many Alleingänge, we didn’t properly coordinate policy with our European partners and the EU institutions, be it on the Energiewende and the push for renewables, or on refugee policy. I can understand that a lot of our European neighbors are upset with Germany for always arguing that everyone needs to stick to the rules and do their homework, but when it comes to us Germans, we are above the rules and can do whatever we like. I think we need to be more self-critical – and a little bit more modest and honest with ourselves. We need Europe, and the German government needs to take greater responsibility in Europe. I hope the next government will interact more with our European partners and find common solutions, in particular with the French.

Working with France in particular, what should be top on the list? The first priority should be to reform the monetary union, making the euro sustainable. This includes improved policy coordination at the European level, on macroeconomic policies, on fiscal policy, on financial markets, on banks, but also areas I mentioned earlier: digital infrastructure, energy, etc. Second, Europe has to act in a more united fashion at the global level. Be it G7, be it G20 – the EU, Germany included, is punching massively below its weight if it doesn’t speak with one voice. At the moment it’s too easy for the Americans, the Chinese, and others to play one European country off against the other.

Is Brexit a worry? From a European perspective, I wouldn’t put it at the top of the list; for the United Kingdom of course it’s the number one issue for years to come. I think the objective of any agreement with the UK must be to not weaken the EU. The aim shouldn’t be to punish Britain, the EU should pursue a very objective approach. But the bottom line should be that a future agreement with the UK does not undermine the EU. Otherwise my big worry would be Italy, where not only the Five Star Movement or the Northern League but also Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia have started talking of leaving the euro, of having a referendum on EU membership – we must make sure those forces aren’t encouraged, as that would be a big threat. The EU cannot function if everyone is pursuing narrow national interests.

Now that the United States under President Donald Trump is no longer championing free trade, can Europe – with Germany at its core – step into this void? And should it? Yes. Europe, and Germany in particular, are benefiting from free trade much more than most other countries, certainly more than the United States; the US is a far more closed economy. But trade policy is set by the EU, and Berlin shouldn’t meddle with it as it did recently by trying to regulate foreign direct investment (FDI) on the national level. That’s another example of the German government ignoring EU competences. My worry is that Germany itself is protectionist as is expressed by the huge trade surplus which is causing a great deal of concern internationally. Germany needs to take this criticism seriously. Protectionist tendencies are mostly prevalent in the services sector, but if you look at what’s been happening in the automobile sector, the German government has certainly been acting protectionist there too, by not holding the big companies accountable, by not making them stick to the rules. So we should champion free trade. The opportunities for European and for German companies are huge, in particular in Asia which is where the future lies. The EU should push for trade liberalization by concluding new bilateral trade agreements through multilateral trade agreements even with the US. TTIP may be a political non-starter right now, but in the long run a US-EU agreement is absolutely inevitable if you want to secure jobs and prosperity.

― interview conducted by Victoria Campion and Henning Hoff

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Cover artwork: © Mitch Blunt

Dear new Chancellor,

Your predecessor – to whom you may well bear a striking resemblance – recently said, “We Europeans have to take our fate in our own hands.” She was quite right. Now that the election is won, it’s time to add the next logical part: “Now.” Yes, the EU has been making quite a comeback of late. But now, it’s mostly up to you to make sure that the European project not only survives but thrives.

Tradition has it that once coalition negotiations have concluded and you and your government have been sworn in, your first foreign engagement will take you to Paris – usually on that very same evening.

But when you touch down at Charles de Gaulle, please make sure you have a detailed reform plan for the EU and the eurozone in your Longchamp handbag – and a number of proposals likely to please your counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron. He will be weathering a substantial dip in his approval ratings as he’s started implementing the changes France urgently needs. For him, Christmas really needs to come early.

However, meeting Macron at least halfway has a wider purpose than simply putting a smile back on the young president’s face. For Europe’s hour to come in earnest, the Franco-German tandem needs to get back in gear – something it can only do when Paris is no longer treated as a junior partner, or used for mere window dressing (as was wont to happen during former president François Hollande’s time in office). The French need to regain their self confidence, and you are up to the job.

Why not look up “Frankreich” in Helmut Kohl’s memoirs? Or even Konrad Adenauer’s? Before the French elections in May, Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, not daring to voice his “love” for France, professed “great admiration” (“großen Respekt”), though that sentiment had not been much in evidence for quite some time.

Meeting Macron as freshly-minted chancellor would be a good time to echo such feelings and demonstrate your own conviction that the nation is becoming truly grande again, in an even more grande EU. In other words, under your leadership, Berlin’s attitude is ripe for a change – less Oberlehrer (schoolmarm),  more trusted friend.

Working together with Macron, a reform of the eurozone, an overhaul of European foreign and security policy, and an ambitious EU-wide immigration policy are all key. While this will require loosening the purse-strings, just remember that every euro spent on consolidating the common currency and improving the EU’s infrastructure is a euro well spent. It is also in Germany’s interest to let France take the lead, and not only in security as has traditionally been the case.

That said, don’t forget that the European project is more than just a Franco-German love story. It is essential that you also strengthen the overall cohesion among the remaining 27 EU member states. Germany needs to become everyone’s good friend again – and mean it. To share leadership would help, even if it implies giving up some control yourself.

This will be easier said than done, of course, once the EU progresses at different speeds. Again, striking a new, humbler tone will help, as will more generosity – even where it may not be strictly deserved.

This doesn’t mean that Germany’s role will be solely moderation and mediation. No, Berlin also needs to become a capital of ideas. Germany’s political class, led by your good self, needs to think “European” – and creatively – first and foremost. To strengthen the EU, your government now needs to come up with new projects palatable to all EU member states. Please always be open-minded about initiatives from others for the improvement of the lives of all 510 million EU citizens.

How about that for a legacy?

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Cover artwork: © Mitch Blunt

Congratulations, Madame Chancellor,

Voters have given you another term as the leader of Germany, and since no one expects you to run again in 2021, you are free now. You can do daring things without giving too much heed to the latest poll numbers. Here are my three suggestions for an agenda that will make you my hero. If that’s not motivation enough, it has the additional advantage of making a real difference for Germany, Europe, and the world.

Domestic politics first: go on a spending spree for education. A really big one. The goal is very simple: cut class sizes by half in elementary and secondary schools by 2025. Make 15 pupils the norm, not thirty. No other education reform will be nearly as effective in promoting individual learning, inclusion, and academic performance. This means, among other things, hiring a veritable army of new teachers, upgrading school buildings, and expanding teachers’ training in universities. It’s a massive undertaking, but its effect will be overwhelming 10 to 15 years down the road. Buy out the federal states and hold the Social Democrats to their education-related campaign slogans. I can’t think of any single policy item that would have a longer-lasting positive effect on Germany than this one.

Second, bury Nord Stream 2, the Russian-German pipeline project, and bury it quickly. That you have let this poisonous project sit and fester has been one of the great puzzlements of your last four years. It undermines everything the re-unified country needed to do in order to ease the lingering suspicions of its neighbors about its size, power, and geopolitical reliability. No other German foreign policy stance (including our notorious unwillingness to get serious about military affairs) is as corrosive as this economically unnecessary project that undermines European unity, smacks of strategic recklessness vis-a-vis our Central European neighbors, and rightfully worries Washington.

Finally, explain the real nature of Germany’s and Europe’s strategic situation to the strategically hapless people of Germany. Use all the credibility, respect, and stateswoman-ly weight that you have accumulated over the last twelve years to make them realize what is at stake, and why Germany will have to do very painful things in the near future.

Explain to them that without the United States, Europe will be unable to remain free and at peace. Explain to them that without military power, diplomacy cannot work in the Balkans, in the Middle East, in North Africa, or facing Russia and China. Explain to them that without allowing some sort of transfer union (in return for strict budgetary oversight), the euro will crash, causing economic mayhem. Explain to them that a technological mega-revolution is unfolding as we speak, and that it will change every aspect of human life, from work to learning, to politics, to health care, to the way we protect, pay, feed, entertain, and love each other. Few countries are better prepared to succeed in that coming world than Germany, but the journey will not be for the faint-hearted.

Preach all of this, restlessly, fearlessly, again and again. For twelve years as chancellor you relied on your aides to be honest with you and speak truth to power. Now spend the last few years of your chancellorship to do what has previously been neglected: explaining strategic realities to a country that prefers to have nothing to do with them. Among the many examples of fine leadership that you have given us, this is the one that’s missing. Sie schaffen das! Good luck and godspeed.

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