© REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

Seven years ago DIE ZEIT foreign editor Jörg Lau provocatively wrote of the “German love of dictators,” pointing to Germany’s uncritical embrace of autocracies, kleptocracies, and theocracies in the name of smoothly doing business, be it China, Russia, or Iran. Lau criticized the German tendency to value “stability” above all else and to characterize the alternative to dictators like Vladimir Putin always as “chaos, separatism, nationalism or even Communism.” Attempts at criticizing regimes like Putin’s was regularly denounced as “hyper-moralism”—and who are the Germans to play the school master of the world given their history?

Strikingly, this approach remains dominant in the case of Germany’s relationship with China, too. Peter Altmaier, the Economy Minister and close confident of Chancellor Angela Merkel, gave an interview on July 15 to Politico Europe defending Berlin’s refusal to take a hard line over China’s repression of Hong Kong. Altmaier argued that those advocating a more strident approach were ignoring the economic consequences of confronting Beijing. He sounded like many of his Social Democratic (SPD) predecessors, making the case for Wandel durch Handel (“change through trade”), stating, “I have always been convinced that change can be achieved through trade.” He argued that this strategy had worked with the former Soviet Union and remained the core of the German approach to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Dangerous Misconception

This answer and approach are mistaken and are quite dangerous in the longer term. The phrase of Wandel durch Handel came out of the earlier formulation of Egon Bahr of Wandel durch Annährung, or “change through rapprochement.”  This was the original concept behind the shift in the West German strategy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1970s under Chancellor Willy Brandt from one of a policy of strength to one of dialogue.

Many Germans, especially Social Democrats, believe to this day that this was the primary factor behind the peaceful reunification of Germany in 1990. It’s true that West Germany’s acceptance of the postwar territorial order and the renunciation of claims for the lost lands in the east were crucial to Mikhail Gorbachev’s acceptance that Germany was no longer a threat to the Soviet Union. Without the support of the United States, however, both with its extended deterrent and diplomacy, German unification would not have happened the way it did.

This way of thinking also downplayed the major political and ideological differences between the West and Communist East to the point that Chancellor Helmut Schmidt agreed with the East German Communist leader, Erich Honecker, that martial law was necessary in Poland in 1981. Stability trumped ideological differences, democracy, and human rights. This was a form of realism to be sure and another example of the German love of stability.

The Primacy of Economics

The reasons behind Germany’s passivity lie in the nature of the its geo-economic approach to foreign policy, which is grounded in its political economy. Germany is the most export driven economy in the world, with close to half of its GDP deriving from exports. It also has the globe’s largest per capita current accounts surplus, is heavily dependent on industry and on the import of energy and other raw materials to fuel its industrial core. The business of Germany is business and despite the importance of Moralpolitik and the need to atone for the crimes of the Third Reich, economics is seen as the foundation of both German democracy and Berlin’s international role.

This approach was adapted to Putin’s Russia from 2008 under the “partnership for modernization” of then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during the first Merkel Grand Coalition government. This concept argued that change would come through economic interdependence, or Verflechtung. The growing authoritarianism of the Putin regime and the Russian invasion of Ukraine shook, but did not break this illusion. To this day, however, German investment and trade with Russia has done practically nothing to open up the political and judicial system of Russia or to reduce its rampant corruption. Based on data compiled by Transparency International, Russia ranks 137 out of 198 countries in terms of corruption and its score of 28 out of a possible 100 has not changed since 2012. There is little evidence of much Wandel here.

Tough on Trump, Soft on Xi

China is a much more different and more important matter, given its much greater economic weight. Both China and Russia have violated international agreements with impunity, Russia in Ukraine and China in its agreement with the United Kingdom on the “one country, two systems” concept for the status of Hong Kong. Like many other Western corporations, German companies like Volkswagen, Siemens, and BASF are manufacturing in Xinjiang province where Uyghurs and other Muslims are being held in interment and labor camps.

Chancellor Merkel has been silent and Altmaier argues that it might be “too risky to pursue a confrontational course” against China. Yet, there is more risk in dealing with a country which openly violates its international agreements and lies without any attempt at pretending they are doing so. Accommodation conveys weakness and invites further pressure and blackmail, undermining the economic and political objectives of the strategy.

While German leaders have been rightly critical of US President Donald Trump’s disregard for democracy and human rights, they have their own version of value free transactional policies with regard to China, Russia, Hungary, and other illiberal regimes. Merkel’s and Altmaier’s Christian Democrats (CDU) continue to welcome Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz into the European People’s Party caucus in the European Parliament; and the government has no qualms about German car makers continuing to invest in Hungarian plants.

Thus, Berlin is not likely to use its EU presidency in the second half of 2020 to stand up to Orbán and to the consolidation of illiberalism in Poland. The current discussions in the EU about a COVID-19 fiscal stimulus package raised the issue of tying economic support to the rule of law, specifically in regard to Hungary, but this was kept out of the European Council’s final agreement.

Time to Change the Tune

With Germany presently at the EU’s helm, this would be the time to show that the EU stands for more than just economic power. Non-governmental organizations like Transparency International and German foundations have promoted a more values-based approach including support for democratic reforms, but so far Merkel’s government has fallen far short of expectations that Germany can be a leader for liberal values.

This is the more troubling since Germany’s geo-economic position is under threat from both China and Russia. The issue of intellectual property rights, equal and reciprocal access to the Chinese market, and the role of Chinese investment and takeovers of German companies in key sectors is central to Germany’s continued economic power and independence. This was pointed out last year in a major study by the German Confederation of Industry, the BDI. Russian investments, like Nord Stream 2, pose the prospect of Wandel in Germany rather than in Russia with the export of corruption and political influence buying in Germany itself, not to mention the continued waging of hybrid war by Putin in Germany.

As Lau pointed out in his 2013 article, demand for German products, investment, and expertise will survive a more balanced and critical approach. The Chinese will continue to demand German automobiles and German technology even if the chancellor meets with the Dalai Lama or is critical of the suppression of democratic rights in Hong Kong. Putin will continue to pump gas and provide oil to the German market.

Germans need to learn the lessons of their neighbors. The UK spoke of a new “golden decade” of relations with China under David Cameron, but now Boris Johnson’s government has reversed course banning Huawei from the UK 5G network and sharply criticizing China’s violation of the agreement on Hong Kong. The French government under Emmanuel Macron has also taken a tougher line on Beijing (see also “Pariscope: Macron’s Entente Cordiales Against China”).

Germany is in a far stronger position than the UK to exercise its economic power to speak for its values. Along with Paris, Berlin is key to the development of a strong EU position on China, Russia, and on authoritarians in Europe. As Andreas Fulda recently argued in a commentary for the British think tank RUSI, “Europe can no longer afford Germany’s unprincipled and failed China policy of change through trade… While trade clearly matters, European values need to be defended too.”

NB. Noah Ramsey contributed research to this article.

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“We are at war,” Emmanuel Macron declared on March 16, announcing a nation-wide curfew. As in war, France’s president wants to mobilize the whole nation to achieve one goal: defeating the virus.

Macron even invoked the spirit of the Union Sacrée—the truce of all French political parties after Germany declared war on France in 1914—and suspended the adoption of the pension reform that recently caused the greatest social fracture in decades.

In times of crisis, the French are looking for a strong leader. More than 35 million tuned into Macron’s speech, over half the population of France. The 2018 world cup final of Les Bleusagainst Croatia attracted 26 million viewers. And when Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the German nation on March 18, 25 million watched.

And the dramatic speech worked for Macron. Polls show that 76 percent found him convincing. Parisians are staying at home in their often tiny apartments. My flat lies in Europe’s second most densely populated neighborhood (52,218 persons per square kilometer). For the first time since moving here I can hear the birds chirping.

War Economy

Macron’s war analogy is shocking at first glance. But it is the right frame of thinking, especially for the economy.

Traditional war economies share three characteristics: First, government spending explodes as the state funds its war effort. Second, the goal of monetary policy becomes the financing of the state. Third, economic policy shifts to the left as governments must project hope of a better future to keep morale high.

In his speech, Macron ticked all three boxes: money should be no object in Europe’s fight against coronavirus. After the European Central Bank presented its first batch of meagre crisis measures on March 12, the Élysée immediately criticized the ostensibly independent central bank saying monetary policy had to go way further.

To the French Macron promises a strengthened welfare state, a more sovereign Europe, and a rethink of globalization at the end of the crisis. “The day after, when we will have prevailed, won’t be like the day before. We will be stronger morally, we will have learned, and I will draw the lessons, all the lessons,” the president said with determination.

Europe-Building

Finally, wars have often served as the catalyst for either nation-building or political disintegration. To stave off collapse, in times of extraordinary stress, heterogenous communities need to learn to trust each other, cooperate outside familiar structures and design new institutions—or fail.

In this context, the president of the Grande Nation made Europe a key theme in his first televised coronavirus address, stressing that this is a common struggle to be faced as “Europeans”—“the virus has no passport,” Macron said. Badly affected regions should be isolated, and it should be Europe’s borders rather than national borders that should be closed. “It is at this level that we have built our freedoms and liberties,” the French president emphasized.

And to get Europe’s war economy going, Macron’s eurozone vision now stands a chance of being realized. In a crisis, the tables turn in favor of integrationists. Saying “no” to any form of fiscal integration doesn’t work anymore for the “frugal” countries if they don’t want to put the currency union in peril. As in the 2010-2014 eurozone banking and sovereign debt crisis, when Berlin had to accept the setup of the EU’s bailout funds. Alongside Rome, Paris now proposes issuing “corona bonds” to coordinate the funding of Europe’s fight against the virus.

Still, so far the coronavirus crisis is yet another example of Macron trying to take European leadership and making bold proposals that lead nowhere because Berlin resists them. Furthermore, Macron is getting caught up in nationalist reflexes.

In her address to the nation last week, Merkel didn’t mention Europe once. When asked during a press conference about fiscal solidarity in the EU, the chancellor was evasive, saying cryptically, “We have to take care that we are now not institutionalizing something that has always been demanded by some.”

And while Macron celebrated the German federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Saarland taking on corona patients from French Alsace, the epicenter of the French Coronavirus crisis, Merkel’s not so subtle social distancing from her neighbors perplexed many in Paris once again. In fact, there is frustration at the level of disinterest in Europe-building.

France First?

That Europe is currently practicing a danse macabre is not all Berlin’s fault. It was Paris that fired the first shot at undermining the EU’s core, the single market. On March 3, Macron announced the requisition of all medical protection equipment in France. This prompted Berlin to ban all exports of medical equipment the next day.

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said on March 6 that the export ban could be lifted if an EU-wide ban was agreed. His French counterpart defended the requisition the following day, arguing it prevented masks being given to the highest bidder and that Brussels should coordinate the distribution of stocks. However, it took another ten days before Paris and Berlin agreed to drop their export restrictions to fellow EU member states on March 16.

It’s not only future historians who will quibble over who is responsible for this blunder. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said pointedly, “We see in Europe that solidarity doesn’t function when push comes to shove. There will be a lot to discuss when this over.”

It’s the Narrative

In today’s Italy, Lega leader Matteo Salvini is successfully pushing his narrative of Europe’s abandonment of Italy. The mask export ban will leave a deep scar in Italy’s collective memory. Italian social media is rife with posts arguing that a statement by the European Central Bank president, Christine Lagarde, to a Handelsblatt journalist that the ECB should not put a tab on Italian government bonds yields is part of a deliberate plan to bring Italy to its knees to benefit Merkel. Italian mainstream papers decry Lagarde’s “anti-Italian attitude” and eagerness to please Berlin.

The health crisis has already morphed into an economic crisis. To prevent it from becoming a European political crisis, Merkel and Macron must suppress their nationalist instincts and express their joint commitment to the currency union, the single market and those EU members like Italy with less fiscal leeway to fight the virus. Italians needs to hear this, so that Europe stands a chance of regaining their trust.

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© REUTERS/Yves Herman

When you go to Berlin and discuss foreign policy, Angela Merkel’s critics and admirers agree on one thing: the chancellor pursues a typically German foreign policy—pragmatic and without any grand design in mind.

Berlin has no geopolitical culture, the argument goes. The sober “country of engineers” generally distrusts grand strategizing. German politicos like to cite the sociologist Max Weber (“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards”) or former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (“If you have visions, you should see a doctor.”)

Finally, according to this mainstream view, Germany still feels deeply uncomfortable with power politics. Berlin—very much unlike Paris—always prefers reserve to dominance, and cooperation to conflict.

Twisted Selfie

But in politics, as on Instagram, selfies are always lopsided. First, the narrative of Germany’s post-World War II aversion to thinking big and acting bigger isn’t borne out by history.

The key chancellors of post-1945 Germany—Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Kohl—were all visionaries. They pursued a foreign policy driven by a desire to escape their country’s history and geography. The lesson from the past? If Germany with all its power, its dynamism, and its Mittellage—its central position in the heart of Europe bordering nine nations—behaves like a “normal” country, trouble looms.

Solving the so-called “German question” meant two things for German leaders. First, Bonn should withdraw from the “seesaw politics” that saw Germany pivoting between east and west. Instead, Bonn had to be clearly anchored in the West. And second, Germany should equate national with European interest. Indeed, it should be more pro-European than others. When devising national policy, it should always take into account the consequences for its neighbors.

In practice, Adenauer’s policy of West-integration rested on three pillars: reconciliation with France, European integration, and the transatlantic defense alliance NATO. In close cooperation with Washington, Brandt pursued his Ostpolitik—the double-pronged approach of firmness towards the Soviet Union coupled with a willingness for dialogue. And with reunification spurring fears of renewed German hegemony, Kohl turbo-boosted EU integration through the introduction of the euro.

These were no sober pragmatists! To quote Egon Bahr, the former state secretary to Brandt and mastermind behind Ostpolitik, they were like architects “capable of seeing something that does not yet exist,” but should. And they leveraged all their authority and pathos in order to push through their strategic visions against often heavy domestic opposition.

Mittellage 2.0

This collective memory of Germany’s foreign policy tradition is fading. And maybe that’s no coincidence at a time when Berlin is drifting away from Adenauer’s politics of West-orientation. In an world increasingly orientated to the East, the chancellor’s unconditional support of Germany’s export-industry has been shifting the country into a new geostrategic position: a global Mitellage.

Early on the chancellor realized that China was not only a rising power, but a savior for Germany’s economy. Throughout her 15-year reign, Merkel has invested much in the Beijing relationship and has visited the country every year. It has paid off. China will in a few years be more important economically for the world’s “export champion” than the United States.

In the growing trade and tech war, the Trump administration is pressing Berlin to side with Washington. But Merkel thinks in terms of issues, not geopolitical blocs and therefore is standing by her China strategy. Her economy minister, Peter Altmaier, even argues that companies from authoritarian China are as trustworthy as those from the democratic United States. Merkel feels no need to rein him in.

Instead, the chancellor is taking on her own CDU lawmakers who are threatening a rebellion over Huawei’s role in Germany’s 5G network; it’s likely the last major struggle of her political career.

Life Insurance

And what about Europe’s place in Merkel’s thinking? The chancellor never misses a chance to underline the fact that the EU has brought peace and prosperity to Germany.

Merkel sees the EU as the key instrument to ensuring stability and a multilateral rules-based order on the continent. When revanchist Russia invaded Ukraine, Merkel took the lead and forged the European response. Contrary to Paris, she resists the easy temptation to reset relations with Moscow and champions EU enlargement in the Balkans.

Economically, the EU is Germany’s “life insurance,” as Merkel put it in a recent interview with the Financial Times. The single market and the euro protect Germany’s export industry. Merkel also wants to strengthen the EU, for example by setting global regulatory standards. And she wants to collaborate on industrial policy so that Europe is not left behind in the race for tomorrow’s technology.

Finally, Merkel knows that every insurance comes with a premium. In terms of money, she is willing to increase Germany’s contribution to the EU budget after the UK exit. And in terms of politics, she has tried to accommodate Macron’s zest for action. In 2018 in the so-called “Meseberg Declaration,” Berlin and Paris outlined a European roadmap with some substantial elements.

A “Normal” Country

But contrary to her predecessors, advancing European integration is not an end in itself for Merkel. The country is reunified. The “German question,” many in Berlin believe, is solved. The EU doesn’t need any deepening just for the sake of constraining German hegemony. And contrary to Adenauer or Kohl, Merkel never felt the need to put her career on the line to advance Europe at home.

Like any other “normal” EU member state, Germany is instead free to pursue its national interest within the EU today.  And as nothing in Europe can be done against Berlin’s will, Merkel has the luxury of being able to hesitate, endure conflict, and play power politics at times.

Think of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia to Germany—the chancellor has no problem ignoring the security concerns of her eastern EU and NATO partners. In the euro crisis, Berlin largely got its way and deflected all criticism. And when deciding on exiting nuclear energy or the 2015 refugee crisis, Merkel did not coordinate her position with Paris. Such unilateralism on issues of European importance would have been unthinkable in the Bonner Republic.

Portfolio Manager

Under Merkel, Adenauer’s policy of West-orientation, the cornerstone of German post-war foreign policy, has been fading. Merkel operates like a portfolio manager, masterfully diversifying risks. If you don’t have a clear winning trade, keep all options open. This is causing Berlin to increasingly drift into a position of equidistance between China and the US.

Of course, this is not all Merkel’s doing. Today, Germany’s export economy has outgrown the West. And the global political framework is evolving. Populists are breaking apart the consensus on policies from trade to human rights that used to define the Western camp. The world is not the same as in Adenauer’s times.

But on Europe, nothing has really changed since Adenauer. Germany is still not a “normal country”—it still lies at the heart of the continent and is today more than at any time since 1945 Europe’s most powerful state. And as with General Motors, what is good for Germany is not necessarily good for the EU.

All Change?

The three top candidates for the CDU leadership disagree on many things including China. But they all reminisce about the days when CDU chancellors saw it as their job to convince Germans of the need for “more Europe.” Announcing his candidature, Friedrich Merz said “The CDU has to once again become the leading Europe-party in the Federal Republic.” Armin Laschet argued at the Munich Security Conference “in the time of Kohl, the major EU initiatives all came from Germany … you have to summon that courage today.” Norbert Röttgen even penned an answer to Macron’s vision of a “sovereign Europe.”

History had taught Germany’s post-war chancellors that looking beyond the issues of the day and its short-term interests is the only realistic way to overcome the “German question” and the country’s Mittellage. With Merkel on her way out, this line of thinking may be about to see a revival. But before that happens, Germans should update their selfie.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Here are three takeaways from the earthquake in German politics:

First, the next leader of Germany’s conservatives will be a man—and politically quite different from Chancellor Angela Merkel and her preferred successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who announced her resignation on Monday. Personally speaking, my money is on Jens Spahn, the current health minister, over the former CDU grandee Friedrich Merz and North Rhine-Westphalia State Premier Armin Laschet.

Second, the Christian Democrats’ new leader will face Herculean task. He will need to reconcile the different political wings and bridge the deep divide between East and West within the party. He also must find an effective way of countering the rise of the extreme-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Otherwise, Merkel’s CDU risks marginalization.

Third, please look at who has, at least for now, survived once again: Angela Merkel and her grand coalition. Both have weathered hard storms. Merkel is still looking cool and unruffled while her SPD coalition partners appear increasingly frazzled, but don’t count either out. Both the chancellor and her government could last until the end of their regular term in the fall of 2021.

Stability and Turmoil

Germany is a strange mixture of stability and turmoil these days. Despite numerous coalition crises, Merkel is well into her 15^th year in office at home and well respected, even admired abroad. A safe pair of hands if ever there was one, she is a safe haven from the rapid, profound changes that have upturned politics in most Western countries.

Germans largely share this view. Angela Merkel continues to be the country’s most popular politician—a truly astonishing feat after such a long time in office. At the same time, a quick survey showed, most Germans do not want her to change her mind about leaving the Chancellery and run for a fifth term in office. Even though they are risk averse, they are conscious of how stagnant the country has become under Merkel.

In late 2018, when she gave up the party leadership, Merkel also promised not to run for chancellor again. With her blessing, the CDU elected Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a centrist from the western state of Saarland, to lead the party. AKK, as she is known, also seemed likely to become Merkel’s successor in the chancellery.

Having Her Power and Eating It

But all too quickly, the fault lines of Merkel’s succession project became visible: you can’t have your power and eat it. Merkel was determined to hold on to control over her government as well as her legacy, and AKK wasn’t ruthless enough to challenge her. As a result, her authority over the party was weak. Of course, she made mistakes, too, both as party leader and later as defense minister. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s doomed proposal for an international security zone in Syria—made with no prior consultation even within the German government—is just one example.

Nevertheless, AKK might have continued and recovered if not for the political impasse in the small eastern state of Thuringia. Regional elections last autumn resulted in heavy losses for the state’s Christian Democrats, who were then faced with a devilish choice: vote for a government led by the formerly communist Left Party, join votes with the far-right AfD to elect a state premier, or accept that no coalition can be formed and call for new elections.

The face and leader of Thuringia’s AfD is the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke, a wily player who managed to lure the CDU deputies into jointly voting for a Liberal candidate. For the first time, a mainstream politician in Germany gained office due to votes from the AfD. Outrage ran high, and the new state premier resigned after only a day. But for AKK, who proved unable to enforce her ban on fraternizing with the AfD, the damage was done. It didn’t help that Merkel interfered from abroad, calling the vote “unforgivable.” The Thuringia CDU has fallen in the polls since the scandal , while the Left Party is gaining support.

Kramp-Karrenbauer threw in the towel on Monday. In her statement, she included a sharp dig at Merkel. “Separating the chancellery from the party chairmanship, the open question of who will be candidate for the chancellery, this weakens the CDU,” she said.

Not So Quick

Yet AKK did not call for a quick changeover of power. According to the timetable she presented, she plans to remain in office as party leader of the CDU until the next regular congress in December. At that gathering, the CDU would choose a new chair, who would also be nominated as top candidate for the next elections. Merkel and her coalition government could remain in place until the autumn of 2021, according to AKK’s plan.

Can the CDU’s leadership issues wait that long? Possibly not, but Merkel’s would-be successors also recognize the dangers of being nominated too far ahead of an election. On Monday, Spahn, Merz, and Laschet all showed a great deal of restraint in claiming the top job.

Whoever it will be, whenever it happens—the new CDU leader’s job is not going to be easy. After nearly two decades of Merkel’s centrist policy, the party is torn between continuing along her line or moving back to the right. There is no consensus, either, about how to deal with the AfD’s success particularly in eastern Germany. After Thuringia, the next regional elections in the East will take place in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, very possibly leading to similar political impasses.

But after this Monday, one thing at least is clear: whether it takes 18 months or less, for Angela Merkel and the stable state she has come to represent, the countdown has begun. Brace for change in Germany and Europe.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

On Saturday morning, Chancellor Angela Merkel published her weekly video podcast. This one was about the importance of craftmanship in Germany, and how much it does for the vocational training of young people. Routine, happily boring routine, established over hundreds of Saturdays since Merkel first took office in 2005.

On Saturday night, the chancellor’s routine ended abruptly. Her junior partner in government, the Social Democratic Party, announced the result of its leadership vote: and—in a very unpleasant surprise for Merkel and arguably bad news for the SPD itself—the anti-establishment, anti-grand coalition faction won. As a result, the chancellor’s Saturday video messages may soon be history.

Instead of choosing Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a well-known and moderate politician who was strongly in favor of staying in government, SPD members voted for two virtual unknowns: Saskia Esken, a Bundestag backbencher, and Norbert Walter-Borjans, a former finance minister of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. These two got the vote because they promised to take the SPD out of the Merkel coalition unless government policy changed dramatically to the left.

„I don’t believe that the grand coalition is the right constellation in the long run,” Walter-Borjans explained in a television interview. “But we’re in there, and that’s the basis on which we have to say what needs to be done. And if there is a blockade mentality on the side of the coalition partner, then the decision has to be taken that this cannot continue.”

An Inexperienced Duo

Esken, 58, has been a member of the Bundestag since 2013, specializing in digital policy. Yet she has never held office in government or a top position in the party before. Walter-Borjans, 67, has no parliamentary experience, though he was finance minister in Germany’s most populous state for seven years, between 2010 and 2017. While he made a name for himself fighting tax fraud, he also gained a reputation as a reckless spender. Walter-Borjans ran deficits that were so high that the state’s constitutional court judged his budgets to be unconstitutional several times in a row.

Most of the party leadership as well as the SPD group in the Bundestag had been backing Scholz, so the winning duo may find it difficult to gain support in Berlin. Esken and Walter-Borjans are also hampered by the narrow margin by which they won the contest: of the 425,000 SPD members, only 55 percent took part in the run-off. Of those who did vote, 53 percent opted for Esken and Walter-Borjans. Scholz and his running mate Klara Geywitz won 45 percent of the vote.

Political observers think it was a kind of Brexit vote, motivated by an anti-establishment sentiment against what many SPD members see as a distant and unresponsive party elite in Berlin. Similar to the Brexit referendum, the margin for the winning side is small, which is likely to weaken the new leaders’ legitimacy and deepen divisions within the SPD even further.

It’s a disappointing result for all those who had hoped that holding grassroots elections would help unite and renew Germany’s oldest political party—a party that has seen its election results decline ever more rapidly since the early 2000s.

According to the most recent Forsa poll (taken before the leadership count was announced), the SPD stands at 14 percent of the vote, far less than Merkel’s conservatives (27 percent) or the Greens (22 percent). It is only just ahead of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (13 percent).

Conflicts Ahead

Walter-Borjans and Esken campaigned on a leftist agenda, calling for a huge boost in investment, more radical measures against climate change, and more generous subsidies for low pensions. They also want to introduce a wealth tax and raise the minimum wage to €12 per hour, a whopping 25-percent increase.

Many details remain open. The SPD will hold its annual party congress from December 6 to 8 to officially confirm Esken and Walter-Borjans in office. The two new leaders have announced that they will seek a vote about their agenda for the coalition. And while delegates are unlikely to back every measure that their two new leaders have proposed, some will certainly pass, leading to a massive conflict within Germany’s governing coalition.

Merkel’s conservatives, who are caught in a leadership struggle of their own, made it clear that they have no intention of giving in to any new demands from the SPD. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the embattled head of the Christian Democratic Union, pointed to the coalition agreement the SPD signed two years ago. “For the CDU, that’s the basis of the deal,” she said. “On this basis, we are willing to enact policy for Germany.”

A possible scenario is a truce over a Christmas and a blow-up early in the new year. If the SPD ministers walk out, Merkel could choose to continue with a minority government, a first in post-war German history—or call new elections.

A minority government would be unstable and unlikely to last to the end of the regular term in 2022, but it would provide Germany and Europe with an experienced leader—Angela Merkel—during the country’s EU presidency in the second half of 2020. More likely, however, are new elections, which could take place in March at the earliest. As the polls stand now, the result could be a coalition between conservatives and Greens, another first at the national level.

But Angela Merkel won’t be chancellor of that government.

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© REUTERS/Andrea Verdelli/Pool

Near the end of her speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Chancellor Angela Merkel struck a resigned, almost plaintive note about Germany’s place in a world dominated by a more hostile United States and China.

Germans could work day and night to be the best, she told her audience, but they would still come up short against the Americans, with their massive economy and all-powerful dollar, and the rising Chinese, with a population more than 16 times the size of Germany’s.

“The odds look pretty bad for us,” Merkel concluded in a remarkable admission of frailty.

That moment in Munich is instructive when trying to understand Merkel’s trip to China last week, her twelfth in 14 years as chancellor and perhaps the most challenging of all her visits, amid violent protests in Hong Kong, an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing, and nascent European attempts to push back against the master plans of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Constant Criticism from Trump

Germany is feeling especially vulnerable these days. Its economy, held up for the past decade as the growth locomotive of Europe, is heading into recession, buffeted by the decline in international trade and investment, Brexit, and a struggle by its industrial champions to adapt to a digital future.

The United States, guarantor of Germany’s security since World War II, has turned into its biggest critic. Hardly a day goes by when US President Donald Trump or one of his allies doesn’t lob a verbal grenade at Germany, for its lack of defense spending, its outsized trade surplus, or its addiction to Russian gas.

Against this gloomy backdrop, China looms with open arms. It believes in climate change. It pays lip service to the idea of a free, multilateral trading system. Despite recent signs of weakness, it remains a vast, growing market for German firms. And it doesn’t engage in Germany-bashing. On the contrary: at a time when the Trump administration is gearing up for a new Cold War, Beijing is doing all in its power to lure Europe’s largest economy into its camp.

But there is a price for doing business with China, and Merkel paid it during her two-day visit to Beijing and Wuhan. Not once did she utter the word “Xinjiang,” the western Chinese province where more than a million members of the Muslim minority have been detained in reeducation camps. And not once did she criticize Beijing for its handling of the protests in Hong Kong, limiting herself to calls for dialogue and de-escalation.

Open for Business

At her news conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Merkel sounded almost apologetic about her government’s moves to shield German companies from the opportunistic embrace of state-backed Chinese rivals, reassuring her hosts that the German market remained open for acquisitive Chinese firms. And she praised Beijing for granting German companies like Allianz, BASF, and BMW opportunities in China that have been denied to other Western firms—moves that skeptics dismiss as symbolic gifts designed to soften up the Germans.

Merkel’s trip came after a year in which Europe, in the words of French President Emmanuel Macron, overcame its “naivety” vis-à-vis China, erecting its own barriers to Chinese investments in its critical infrastructure and declaring the rising Asian superpower to be a “strategic rival.”

In January, the Federation of German Industries, an influential business lobby, issued a toughly worded paper that questioned whether China would ever fully open up its market to foreign investment and urged European countries to work closely together, and with like-minded partners including the United States, to coordinate their response.

European Shift

Spooked by China’s economic ambitions, a new European Commission is expected to explore changes to the bloc’s industrial, competition and procurement policies when it takes over later this year.

Yet there was little evidence of this European shift during Merkel’s visit. And her partners, in Paris, Brussels, and other capitals, may be alarmed by its “back to business” tone.

Merkel travelled with a large delegation of German CEOs, the most prominent of whom was Siemens boss Joe Kaeser, who once referred to China’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative as “the new WTO.” Also along for the ride was Volkswagen’s chairman, Herbert Diess, who only a few months ago caused outrage when he denied knowing anything about the mass detentions in Xinjiang, where VW has a plant, despite months of front-page stories about the plight of the Uighurs.

The Trump administration, which has been piling pressure on Germany and other European countries to follow its lead and decouple from China, will also be alarmed. A transatlantic split over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications supplier Huawei in next-generation 5G networksis looming. And that may provide just a taste of the tensions to come.

At a time when Washington is eyeing new export controls against China, Germany is doubling down on research collaboration with the Chinese and pressing Beijing to clinch an elusive investment agreement with Europe in time for an EU-China summit that Merkel will host in the eastern city of Leipzig in September 2020. If the deal comes together, two months before the US presidential election, it would mark the death knell of Trump’s clumsy attempt to pry the Europeans away from China.

Antithesis to German Values

The Americans must see this. On the same day that Merkel was meeting with Li in Beijing, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper was in London warning Europe to be wary of China.

“The more dependent a country becomes on Chinese investment and trade, the more susceptible they are to coercion and retribution when they act outside of Beijing’s wishes,” Esper told the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.

Merkel is not naive. As Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong pointed out in an open letter to the German leader before her trip, she grew up under authoritarian rule in communist East Germany. She sees what is happening in China, from the rollout of a Social Credit System grounded in big-data surveillance, to Beijing’s attempts to chip away at democratic freedoms in Hong Kong and its crackdown in Xinjiang.

All this is antithetical to German values. And yet, unable to count on the support of the United States, Merkel seems to feel she has no choice but to cozy up to Beijing.

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© REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

There must be times when Angela Merkel closes her eyes and wishes that Donald Trump would simply go away. In her brief daydream, she would be dealing with a very different politician in the White House: a rational and enlightened person, amenable to debate and argument, and open to a wider view of the world and its history.

But every single time the German chancellor opens her eyes, Trump is still there, busily upending traditional US policy and trying to forge a world according to his own views and interests. All too often, this entails conflict with Germany: over trade, over Iran, over gas from Russia, and—most persistently—over military spending.

A long succession of US presidents has believed that Germany is spending too little on its military (a position somewhat validated by the Bundeswehr’s huge problems with outdated and frequently malfunctioning equipment). But none of them have ratcheted up the pressure like Donald Trump, who seizes every occasion to scold Germany for free-riding.

Where Trump goes, his handpicked diplomats pave the way. In early July, two months before Trump is scheduled to visit Europe twice (both without a stop in Germany, and there’s supposed to be a lesson there), his ambassadors to Poland and Germany raised the issue again. In Warsaw, Georgette Mosbacher tweeted: “Poland meets its 2 percent of GDP obligation toward NATO. Germany does not. We would welcome American troops in Germany to come to Poland.”

Richard Grenell, Trump’s appointee to Berlin and one of the most heartily disliked diplomats ever, happily retweeted Mosbacher’s statement and followed it up with a statement of his own. “It is offensive to assume that the US taxpayers will continue to pay for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but the Germans get to spend their surplus on domestic programs,” he said in an interview.

Currently, Washington has 35,000 soldiers stationed in Germany, supported by 17,000 American and 12,000 German civilians—far fewer than during the Cold War, but still the second-largest force outside the United States.

Raising the Pressure

Grenell’s comment allows for several interpretations, all of which aim at raising the pressure on Berlin: the US could bring home some or all of its forces; it could station them in Poland; or it could make Germany pay a much higher contribution in order to keep them.

All three scenarios have been talked about before. In June 2018, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was looking at options for bringing back troops from Germany or relocating some of them to Eastern Europe. Warsaw, both because its government is ideologically close to Trump and because it would like US troops on its soil as an insurance against Russian aggression, offered to contribute $2 billion toward the costs of setting up permanent bases.

In March of this year, Bloomberg reported that the administration was drawing up demands for Germany, Japan, and South Korea to pay much more toward the upkeep of US troops. The plan was to make those countries pay the entire cost plus an additional 50 percent for the privilege of hosting them, Bloomberg said, citing anonymous sources in the administration.

According to this report, Trump has been championing the idea for months. In talks with South Korea over the status of the 28,000 troops stationed there, he overruled his negotiators with a note to National Security Adviser John Bolton saying, “We want cost plus 50.” In the end, the American delegation accepted a much lower increase to the South Korean contribution, but the new agreement was concluded for only a year, which means that further talks must be held before the end of 2019.

Bad News for Germany

“Cost plus 50,” if confirmed, is particularly bad news for Germany. According to a study by Rick Berger, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Germany could be asked to pay 10 times more than today—$10 billion instead of $1 billion per year—if the US decides to include all its costs, even the troops’ salaries.

To irk Germany further, Washington apparently is pondering two rates, with a rebate given to countries that are ideologically aligned with the Trump administration. Germany would certainly not qualify, given the many policy disagreements and the personal dislike between Trump and Merkel.

Most recently, Merkel’s government rebuffed a request from Washington to join a US-led military operation to secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Germany fears being drawn into war against Iran by a US administration that unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement and is ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran.

Costly for All

In his remarks about the troops, Grenell did not refer to the differences over Iran, but they certainly contributed to the Trump administration’s profound exasperation with Berlin. But is it really imaginable that the US would withdraw its armed forces from Germany?

Such a step would be harmful to Germany, and not just because the US bases are an important economic factor. Europe is not ready to defend itself—talks about a European army aren’t getting anywhere in a hurry—and US troops in Germany provide a tangible guarantee of American assistance in case of need.

At the same time, pulling out of Germany would be extremely costly for the US, both financially and in terms of power projection. Most of the troops aren’t in Germany to defend Germany anyway, but because it is an established hub for operations further afield.

Ramstein Air Base is vital for US air operations throughout the Middle East, Stuttgart hosts the US Africa Command, and the Landstuhl Regional Medical is the largest overseas military hospital in the world, providing emergency care to US soldiers wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots. Even with huge investment, Poland could not build up such an infrastructure anytime soon.

Officials in the State Department and the Pentagon are deeply worried about any schemes to withdraw the troops or make Germany pay much more for them—which, given the strong current of anti-Americanism in Germany, would be politically impossible.

Keeping Promises

Yet if there is one thing that the world has learnt about Donald Trump, it is that he is good at keeping his promises—whatever the cost. And Trump has been arguing for a very long time that America’s allies should either pay for the troops or see them brought home.

“The Japanese have their great scientists making cars and VCRs, and we have our great scientists making missiles so we can defend Japan,” he said in an interview with Playboy in 1990. “Why aren’t we being reimbursed for our costs?”

Closing her eyes may give Merkel a temporary reprieve from the headache that is promising to happen. But if Trump gets reelected to a second term next year, this one is guaranteed to come back.

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© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Less than 24 hours after being nominated as the new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, until now Germany’s minister of defense, began her battle for acceptance. On a flying visit to Strasbourg, von der Leyen met with the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group in the European Parliament.

“It’s here in the European Parliament that the heart of European democracy beats, and that’s why it is so important to immediately start the dialogue,” von der Leyen said. Time is short for her charm offensive: the confirmation vote in Strasbourg has been scheduled for July 16. Von der Leyen must persuade 376 out of 751 deputies to approve her, an absolute majority, with no second chance.

It will be an uphill battle. But the main reason is not what you would expect. It’s not that other Europeans fear that von der Leyen’s confirmation would cement German dominance over the EU. No, it’s actually the Germans themselves who most fiercely oppose her—the first German politician since 1967 to be nominated as president of the European Commission.

Personal Antipathy

An absurd situation in many ways: In the European Council, von der Leyen’s nomination was approved by every government leader’s vote, except Chancellor Angela Merkel’s. She was forced to abstain because her own coalition could not agree to support this German candidate.

Many Germans disapprove of von der Leyen because of her mixed record as defense minister. Others do for reasons of European democracy. With her nomination, EU leaders trashed the European Parliament’s Spitzenkandidat system (leaders were only supposed to choose from among the lead candidates standing at the recent European elections). Both are valid reasons. Yet mixed into them is also an astonishing amount of personal antipathy for the only minister who has served with Chancellor Angela Merkel since her first term in 2005.

On paper, Ursula von der Leyen, 60, fits every European bill.

Just look at her CV. She was actually born in Brussels. Her father, Ernst Albrecht, had a European career before eventually becoming premier of the state of Lower Saxony. She speaks fluent French and excellent English, having studied in Britain and the United States. She also managed the unbelievable feat of having seven children while training and working as a medical doctor.

In terms of politics, her references are just as glowing. Von der Leyen is a passionate European, a conservative modernizer, a forceful advocate of gender equality, skillful at building a network of friends and contacts throughout Europe and the North-Atlantic community. She has been unfailingly loyal to Merkel while also fostering a close friendship with Wolfgang Schäuble, a powerful CDU grande and Merkel skeptic.

Bad Vibes from the Coalition

And yet Ursula von der Leyen is disliked by many. From the very start of her political career, she raised hackles. Maybe she is just too picture perfect at combining a career and a family. Maybe it’s her background as an affluent aristocrat. Maybe it’s her voice that comes across as a bit nannyish or that she has a reputation being distant and even cold. Whatever it is, it is there—and it makes her long and successful political career all the more remarkable.

These bad vibes have turned political criticism into vitriolic attacks against von der Leyen’s nomination—not just by Germany’s opposition parties, but from within Merkel’s government, too. Even her own Christian Democratic party did not support her unanimously. The Werteunion, an ultra-conservative group, said the fact that “an unsuccessful minister” was being promoted that way was “a sign of the repeated failure of the chancellor’s foreign policy.”

“Democracy has lost,” said Markus Söder, the head of the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, who is peeved that his fellow party member Manfred Weber, who had been the European People’s Party’s Spitzenkandidat, was rejected by the European Council.

The sharpest words came from the German Social Democrats, Merkel’s junior partner in government. Former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel called von der Leyen’s nomination an “unprecedented piece of political trickery” and said this was sufficient reason for the SPD to walk out of the government. Katarina Barley, newly elected leader of the SPD deputies in the European parliament, declared that she and many of her colleagues would not vote for von der Leyen.

The SPD, of course, has enormous problems of its own. The party has no leader and no idea how to stop its freefall in the polls; it is also divided about whether to stay in the government coalition or try to recover as an opposition party. Failures and scandals at the defense ministry—including an ongoing parliamentary enquiry into the ministry’s use of consultants that could have become dangerous to von der Leyen as minister—are a welcome distraction.

Chancellor Hopes Long Dashed

In domestic terms, von der Leyen’s career had reached its apex. While she survived the defense ministry for longer than most of her predecessors, the length of her stint there—nearly six years—also means that she is being made increasingly responsible for the equipment failures, procurement snafus, and personnel shortages that plague the Bundeswehr. Any hope she may have had to be nominated Merkel’s successor as chancellor have long evaporated.

Still, von der Leyen was smart enough to keep quiet about any hopes for a big job in Brussels. To have French President Emmanuel Macron propose her as Commission president must have come as a godsend. And while she cannot do much about the dislike she frequently evokes in Germany, she can work on winning over European minds and hearts.

In terms of policies, this means at least two things: should von der Leyen become Commission president, she cannot afford to be soft on possible rule-of-law infringements by EU member states like Hungary or Poland. Those were the governments that successfully derailed the nomination of the Social Democratic Spitzenkandidat Frans Timmermans.

The second element concerns the need for democratic reform: precisely because von der Leyen was not selected through the Spitzenkandidat process, she will need to find ways to reestablish it in the future. At her initial visit with the EPP group in Strasbourg, von der Leyen made a big promise. “Over the next few years, we will be developing a Spitzenkandidat model which will be supported by the Council, by all member states and by all members of Parliament,” she said according to a news report by Politico.

Will this be enough? It just might, particularly as the parliament is painfully conscious of its own failings. EU leaders could only settle on an outside candidate because over the past six weeks, none of the Spitzenkandidaten emerged with a workable majority in parliament. If it does, it will be a double victory: for von der Leyen herself, but also for Angela Merkel, who will have opened the way to the first German president of the Commission in over 50 years and the first woman in that job ever.

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© 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.

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© REUTERS/Piroschka Van De Wouw

“There is no majority in the European Council for any of the Spitzenkandidaten,” declared German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the end of this week’s summit of 28 national EU leaders in Brussels. “I don’t see that I can change this assessment.”

Whether or not this was the death knell for the prospects of Manfred Weber, the nominee of Merkel’s center-right European People’s Party (EPP) to become European Commission President, depends on who you ask. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that after this week’s summit it is certain that neither Weber nor his social democratic challenger Frans Timmermans, the nominee of the center-left PES group, will be Commission President.

Orbán is no fan of either men because of their criticism of his rule of law violations (from the latter much earlier than the former). But his assessment was echoed by other EU leaders including Slovakian Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, who said, “None of them have a majority, and I don’t believe they will have a majority next week.”

The most prominent voice against the process was French President Emmanuel Macron. “It is clear there’s no majority in the Parliament to support the EPP,” he said after the summit. “Then President Tusk said there was no clear majority for any Spitzenkandidat in the Council. Accordingly, this system was not considered to be the valid one, like I’ve said constantly, to appoint the president of the European Commission.”

What Next for Top Jobs?

The Spitzenkandidaten are the candidates for Commission President put up by the European political groups ahead of the election. In addition to Weber and Timmermans, there is the EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager from Denmark representing the third-largest group, the Liberals (which Macron and his LREM party have recently joined).

The system was used for the first time in the last European elections in 2014, when Jean-Claude Juncker was the EPP candidate. The idea is to make the EU’s executive branch more democratic, by having voters indirectly choose the Commission President. The party that can command a majority of seats in the parliament has its candidate become Commission President. But the process has been marred by difficulty in getting the word out to citizens that it even exists. Most voters do not know the names of the three main Spitzenkandidaten.

The other problem is that the system is not laid down in any law, and technically it is still up to the Council of 28 national leaders to appoint the president. But, the parliament can block their appointment by majority vote. And MEPs have threatened to do so if the council appoints a non-Spitzen.

Macron bristled in his final press conference to accusations that he is trying to stymie EU democracy by keeping the choice over Commission president in “smoke-filled backrooms” of the European Council of 28 national leaders.

“The treaties [giving the European Council this power] were put to people and approved,” he said. “Now we hear a tune that the Council should no longer use its powers. But all the people in the Council were elected and have as much legitimacy to make these decisions.” He noted that his idea to have the president selected by transnational lists was rejected by the EPP, because they know the current system benefits them as the largest party.

All In the Mix

There are other positions to fill as well—European Council President, High Representative for Foreign Affairs, European Parliament President and European Central Bank President. All of them are in the mix in these negotiations, but the big prize is the Commission presidency. And the EPP is insisting it should be theirs. In the past, all of these “top jobs” have been chosen at once – though there is no requirement to do so.

At the end of the summit, it was clear that many leaders think it is time to broaden the search beyond the list of Spitzenkandidaten. They would prefer it to be one of their own, a current or former national leader. Angela Merkel’s name has continually come up, though she shot down the suggestion for the umpteenth time when it was put to her at her press conference. Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel has been suggested for Council President.

But the most likely person to get the role continues to be Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator. He was not a Spitzenkandidat, but he is a member of the EPP and seemed to be running a stealth campaign ahead of the election. What remains to be seen is whether the parliament would confirm a non-Spitzenkandidat.

Council President Donald Tusk yesterday called an extraordinary summit for June 30, so all of the leaders will come back to Brussels a week from now to try again for an agreement. But it is unclear how they will be any closer to deciding by then.

Macron insisted that they must, because the issue needs to be settled before July 2, when the new European Parliament meets for the first time in Strasbourg and new presidents of the parliament and the European Central Bank must be chosen. “We’ve seen in the past that any time we lag or waste time, it only makes it more difficult to make a decision,” the French president warned.

Climate Failure

The leaders also failed to take a decision on a plan to decarbonize the EU by 2050. This was the last chance for the EU to adopt the target ahead of a UN conference of the parties to the Paris Agreement in New York in September. The UN secretary general had written to the leaders urging them not to come to the summit empty-handed, saying the commitment for the EU to increase ambition was needed to get other countries to also strengthen their emissions reduction targets.

The target needs to be unanimously agreed by all EU countries. In recent weeks support for the target was building, with Merkel flipping on her initial hesitation and backing the target last week. But in the end, four countries still opposed the target this week. Poland was in the lead with wielding the veto, followed by Hungary, Estonia, and the Czech Republic. They objected to the commitment to decarbonization by a specific date, preferring instead a more vague time commitment.

The summit’s final conclusions say that the EU will “ensure a transition to a climate neutral EU ‘in line with the Paris Agreement’”—removing a reference in the original draft to the specific target date of 2050.

The EU could still adopt the 2050 target at its next European Council summit in October, but this would be after the September climate summit in New York and therefor unlikely to make a difference.

As the national leaders gave their final press conferences, there was a sense of frustration over the fact that so little had been accomplished. And they were certainly even more frustrated that they will have to come back to Brussels in just a week.

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