REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Heiko Maas, Germany’s new foreign minister, grew up in the Saarland, a coal-and-steel region in the very west of West Germany. This small state is steeped in Franco-German history: Maas’ own home town of Saarlouis was built as a fortress by Louis XIV; during Hitler’s rule the name was changed to Saarlautern to make it sound more German. After 1945, the French turned Saarland into their protectorate, until a bitterly-contested referendum in 1955 returned it to Germany.

“My grandmother lived in the same house, in the same street, in the same city for 80 years—but because of the political back and forth, she had five different passports in her life,” Maas wrote in an opinion piece for the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT last year. “But she lived long enough to see that the question of Germany or France has now lost its significance for us Saarlanders, because Europe became the answer to it.”

Maas, 51 and a Social Democrat since 1989, is a newcomer to foreign policy—in other words, an unknown quantity on the international stage. Yet his background as a Saarlander is certain to influence the choices he will make. He is clearly pro-European and in favor of renewing the Franco-German alliance, just as he is clearly not naïve about the challenges it faces.

A lawyer by training, Maas is controlled, reflective, and polite, with a mocking sense of humor. In Berlin, he is admired as a natty dresser, wearing closely cut suits and ties in sober colors. As a former triathlete, he knows how to pace himself. “The goal,” he once said, “comes only after the third discipline.”

“He’ll Be Excellent”

Maas sets a striking contrast to Sigmar Gabriel, his brilliant but impulsive predecessor. It is all the more remarkable that Gabriel—who is bitter about having to leave the foreign ministry—immediately endorsed Maas. “He will be excellent,” he said.

Of course, it was also Gabriel who brought Maas to Berlin in the first place. Back in 2013, when Gabriel was SPD leader, he nominated the Saarlander for the justice ministry. Until then, Maas had essentially spent his life in Saarland. He served as minister in several state governments, but could never win the top post, though he ran three times for the state premiership. Maas’ reputation was on the wane, and his appointment to the ministry in Berlin came as a surprise.

Yet in contrast to most of his colleagues from the German provinces, Maas quickly caught onto the way politics works in Berlin. One of his closest advisers had been working for the SPD group in the Bundestag before and already knew everybody. Maas has also played social media skillfully and actively (perhaps too much so, some of his detractors say), and managed to build a good working relationship with Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere—no small thing given the fierce hostility that is traditional between justice and home affairs.

As justice minister, Maas was immensely productive, with a keen sense of issues that play well in his party and the wider public. His ministry presented new laws on issues ranging from rehabilitating people convicted under outdated laws banning homosexuality to a quota for women in supervisory boards, from protecting small-time investors to stricter anti-doping laws. Not everything turned out perfectly: A new law restricting rent increases turned out to be ineffective, and Maas also drew a lot of fire for his law against hate speech on the internet.

Scourge of the Far Right

A frequent talks show panelist, Maas speaks out on every occasion against xenophobic and anti-Islam movements, like Pegida in Dresden or indeed the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In return, he has received massive amounts of hate mail. After finding a nine-millimeter bullet in the letterbox of his private apartment, Maas was put under additional police protection. If anything, though, that made him more determined to confront the far-right.

Nor has Maas pulled his punches on international issues. “Nobody fosters anti-Americanism as much as the American president,“ Maas said in August 2017. Donald Trump was acting in a catastrophic fashion such as Maas could never have imagined with any previous US president. In his opinion piece for DIE ZEIT, Maas called for a harder line against Turkey and Russia as well. “It is precisely because there are aggressive and authoritarian powers at the gate of Europe that the continent needs to show unified strength,” he wrote.

Presumably, Maas’ tone will become a bit more diplomatic when he is sworn in as foreign minister, but he will likely not soften much on substance. Particularly on Russia, he might be tougher than his two predecessors— Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Gabriel—who are both close to former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a personal friend and ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Of course, much of Germany’s foreign policy is set by the chancellery, and Angela Merkel is unlikely to give this newcomer much leeway in her fourth term in office. Yet it is also clear that Germany alone will have less and less pull in the world, be it in relation with the US, China, or Russia, or in stabilizing Africa and the European neighborhood. With his Saarland background, Maas brings a much-needed Franco-German and pro-European instinct to the table.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Joy was conspicuously absent on March 4 as Germany’s SPD leadership announced that Germany—nearly six months after the elections—was finally going to get a new government. A clear 66 percent of Social Democratic party members had voted in favor of joining another coalition with Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, officials announced after an all-night count. “Now we have clarity: The SPD will enter the next federal government,” said a stony-faced Olaf Scholz, interim party leader and the likely future finance minister.

Angela Merkel can now be elected to her fourth term as chancellor in the Bundestag on March 14. The rest of the government will be sworn in before Easter, ending a period of stasis that had become painfully long—and not just for Germany itself, but for the rest of Europe as well. France’s President Emmanuel Macron in particular was desperately awaiting news from Berlin. His ambitious plans for renewing the Franco-German alliance and reforming Europe have been on hold because of the power vacuum in Germany, and with European parliamentary elections due in 2019 time for reform is ticking away quickly.

As expressionless as he looked, Scholz’s relief must also have been enormous, for the sake of the party as well as his own ambitions. This vote certainly didn’t come easy. Since the elections last September, which went disastrously for the SPD, the party has done a complete U-turn. From being dead set against participating in another Merkel government, it tortuously inched around to supporting the chancellor one more. This process was accompanied by a punishing leadership struggle, ending with the resignation of Martin Schulz from both the party leadership and the future cabinet.

Many of the 460,000 party members were convinced that the SPD was languishing in government under Merkel, forced to support policies that went against their pwn values and unable to get credit for their own successes. Merkel was not just stealing the glory, but deadening the very soul of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (they thought), with ever more catastrophic election results. Only time in the opposition could deliver salvation and renewal.

This same feeling still runs strong in the party, and not just with the third of members who voted against the new coalition. Yet in the end, a large majority approved the new government, partly out of a sense of responsibility toward the country, partly in sheer fear of what would happen to the SPD if new election were called now. The 66 percent who voted in favor of the coalition is a much larger margin than expected, giving Scholz and the designated new party leader Andrea Nahles the legitimacy to be constructive in dealing with Merkel.

In terms of personnel, the incoming German government has every chance to be stable. The SPD desperately needs time to recover before facing the voters again. Meanwhile, Merkel and her Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer know that without the SPD they will not be able to hold on to power. As it is, this is most likely Merkel’s last period in office, and she may decide to step down early—perhaps in 2020—to allow her successor time to gain profile in the job.

Yet coalitions tend to be based on wishful thinking, and Berlin’s new “GroKo” (short for Grosse Koalition, grand coalition) is no exception. The 179-page coalition agreement with its many detailed provisions for the policies to be enacted foresees large additional spending. More money for education, for social policies, for supporting refugees, and for defense, among other expenses, amounts to €46 billion in additional expenditure—or more, as economists have warned. At the same time, the new coalition wants to maintain a balanced budget.

Given strong economic growth, this could work—but there are no provisions for any slowdown. If US President Donald Trump’s policies cause a destructive trade war, or if bubbles in any major markets burst, GroKo will quickly have to switch to crisis management, both domestically and within the eurozone.

The second instance of wishful thinking concerns refugees. After enormous haggling, the parties in the new government have agreed to limit the overall number of refugees admitted to Germany to about 180,000 to 200,000 a year. But what happens if a new migration crisis kicks off, triggered by yet another conflict somewhere near Europe’s borders? The far-right Alternative für Deutschland, already the largest beneficiary of the renewed coalition agreement, is certain to profit.

The third major risk to the new government has less to with outside forces and more with policy difficulties. Merkel and her allies have very solemnly promised to help renew the European Union: they want to strengthen the eurozone, build European defense, create a common asylum system, and agree on a budget framework for the period 2020 to 2027. With the widening gap between eastern and western Europe, much of this may prove impossible.

“Habemus GroKo,” said Cem Özdemir from the opposition Green party after the SPD’s vote count, a jokey reference to how the election of a new pope is announced. But just as Germany and Europe were sighing relief, the next headache arrived. Only hours after the SPD announced it was joining the coalition in Berlin, Italian voters went to the polls. Now it’s the parliament in Rome that has no clear majority, but a strongly euroskeptic tendency. For Europe, interesting times are likely to continue.

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© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

German leader Angela Merkel is the mistress of confidence trick politics. After almost three decades in the game and 18 years as head of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she has perfected the art of doing one thing while convincing you she is doing the opposite—or nothing at all. But for how much longer?

When historians start work on the Merkel era, they will flag February 11, 2018 as the moment when Merkel signaled in public the eventual end of her chancellorship—while denying she was doing anything of the sort. Her long ZDF television interview was a masterly Merkel performance, dismissing suggestions she was under pressure to act and insisting she was acting of her own free will. That, of course, is nonsense.

Since last September the acting German leader has all but vanished from view. That she reappeared for a rare television appearance—to insist that rumors of their political demise are greatly exaggerated—merely catalyzed those rumors, and underlined how serious the situation is. She insisted she was not responding to outside pressure, while caving into that pressure at the same time, and said the time had come to include the next generation in her next cabinet.

As is typical with Merkel she tried to sell a policy shift—which she insisted wasn’t happening—as her own, adapting to critics’ calls in private and, in recent days, in public.

Her fourth cabinet would “naturally” have to ensure that “not just over-60s but also younger [politicians] will be considered.” She was always a promoter of young political talent, she insisted with a straight face, despite her youngest CDU minister being 57 years old.

The CDU leader had news for the young pretenders: don’t get your hopes up that Angela Merkel will vanish from the political landscape any time soon. “When someone like me has been chancellor for twelve years, clearly, they won’t be chancellor for another 12 years,” she said.

In case anyone is planning a putsch—unlikely, given the CDU is not a putsch party—she reminded everyone how she consulted widely within her party last year about running for a fourth term. “I asked if it was right and wished for – and [the answer] was affirmative.” Anyone who tries to force a different outcome would, she indicated, be undermining a campaign promise she made to serve a full term, as chancellor and CDU leader. “I belong to the people who keep what was promised,” she said.

The Lady Protests Too Much

The whole appearance could be filed away under the slogan “the lady doth protest too much.” If there is no pressure on her, why was she in a television studio and not at home watching her favorite TV show, “Midsummer Murders”?

And is she still in a position to dictate events and timing? After all, if it’s business as usual why did she move forward her timetable, and agree to reveal her ministerial appointments before a special party conference to vote later this month on the coalition deal?

On Sunday night Merkel did what she always does—performed a U-turn while simultaneously denying it.

The reality is that the German leader has been caught out by hugely negative blowback to a coalition deal she presented last Wednesday with her old coalition partners, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Whether the coalition actually takes office hinges on a vote of 460,000 SPD members in a postal vote, with the result expected on March 4.

And her coalition partner is in turmoil after leader Martin Schulz announced plans to become foreign minister, contradicting earlier promises that he would keep his party out of government, and himself far from Merkel’s cabinet table.

After two days of outrage he announced his departure from politics and the SPD is now struggling to stabilize itself. But Merkel’s own CDU camp are also furious, with critics accusing her of agreeing to an expansionist €46 billion program for government and handing the SPD key ministries—finance, foreign, and labor—to secure her personal future.

In her television interview Merkel denied that last claim, insisting that she was, of course, acting for the good of a country now 20 weeks without a government. The loss of the finance ministry was “painful,” she conceded, but insisted the coalition agreement was so cleverly worded it would ensure the new minister “cannot do or not do what they want.”

It was her way of dampening expectations that, with Berlin’s coveted finance ministry returning to the SPD, Germany’s EU partners can expect looser German purse strings in the euro reform debate.

No Checkbook Policies

The man likely to be her next finance minister, the SPD Hamburg mayor Olaf Scholz, appears to agree with her. While the man from the SPD’s conservative wing will spend more than his predecessor, he said the coalition agreement would retain the balanced budget policy of his predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble. Anyone expecting Germany to engage in checkbook EU policies, he said, could think again.

“With all additional wishes, we have to look closely at what we can afford and what we can’t,” Scholz said.

His assurances are welcome news for Merkel as she battles concerned CDU conservatives, who believe French euro reform plans amount to a European free-for-all investment plan, financed by Berlin.

But few of Merkel’s impatient would-be successors will be fooled by her Sunday evening appearance. It was not an offensive volley, but a defensive, rear-guard action by a leader who is not on her last legs, but definitely in her final act.

And she has raised the curtain herself by reaching out to ambitious would-be successors, breaking her long-standing habit of never revealing her political thinking. Forced to move, under Zugzwang, she has fired the opening shot in the CDU succession race while denying she holds the starting pistol in her hand.

Now all eyes turn to the young Merkel heirs. First out of the traps on Sunday was Jens Spahn. “We’re not in a monarchy where one organizes one’s own succession,” snorted the ambitious 37 year-old conservative. “When the time comes, then candidates will have to assert themselves.”

You may be right, Jens, but unless someone is ready to wield the knife: join the orderly queue behind the assertive Angela Merkel.

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© REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

As a child growing up in Ireland, we’d often listen to radio reports about the painfully slow progress in the Belfast peace process. We in Ireland are used to political stalemate and constructive ambiguity in pursuit of seemingly impossible long-term goals.

But even I am having difficulty explaining to Irish readers why, 17 weeks on, Germany still doesn’t have a government, and why the much-hyped “breakthrough” at Sunday’s Social Democrat (SPD) conference in Bonn was just another step forward on a long and winding road. The center-left ‘s half-hearted decision to formally enter grand coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right conservatives (CDU/CSU) was less a yes than a “yes, but.”

Europe’s largest country has moved from talks about talks to, well, talks, and that after weeks and weeks of wrangling. Many friends outside Germany are amazed – and secretly amused – that the orderly Germans still don’t know if this negotiation marathon will even lead to a new government.

And if things weren’t complicated enough, Sunday’s vote has muddled matters further. Just over half of SPD delegates in Bonn handed their party leader Martin Schulz a mandate to open talks. Some 44 per cent of his doubting delegates want further concessions from the Merkel camp—or think the idea of another grand coalition with Merkel is a suicide mission.

The SPD leadership, in favor of a grand coalition, has framed a new grand coalition as a chance to free Europe from the austerity era under Angela Merkel.

“The neo-liberal spirit in Europe has to be ended in Europe and we can do this … with a paradigm shift in German EU policy,” said Schulz, the ex-European parliament leader. He urged delegates to see a new coalition as a chance to stand by France and its EU reform proposals, against a “right-wing wave washing over Europe” from Vienna and Budapest to Prague and Warsaw.

“This right-wing wave can be broken in Europe,” he said, “through a German government that fights for human rights, the rule of law and peace.”

“Negotiate Until the Other Side Squeals”

But most SPD voters are less interested in Europe than domestic policy, and on this front, many recognize too little of their party in the preliminary coalition deal to invest in education, infrastructure, and pensions. The doubters want their party to revisit issues blocked by Merkel allies the last time around, like the abolition of Germany’s two-tier, private-public health system. In addition, they want to nail down ambiguous language on immigration that, according to Merkel’s conservative allies, will mean a cap on the number of refugees the country takes in every year.

SPD Bundestag leader Andrea Nahles has vowed to “negotiate until the other side squeals.” But she and Schulz, looking wobbly after Sunday’s vote, know they cannot start from the beginning.

As if on cue, Julia Klöckner, a senior CDU Merkel ally, said any future coalition deal would merely “spell out what was agreed unanimously in the exploratory agreement.”

“We will not shift any walls because then the entire structural engineering will be called into question,” she added Monday morning on German television.

The challenge for Merkel in the coming weeks will be to find sweeteners for the SPD rank-and-file—whose vote on any final agreement is also a referendum on her political future—without losing the support of her Bavarian sister party, the CSU.

The Bavarians are facing state elections in September and, with an eye on their sliding support, annoyed the SPD by pushing a hard line on immigration in exploratory talks.

On Sunday evening Merkel remained vague on possible leeway, saying that the current agreement would provide the framework for formal talks. Either way, the acting German chancellor has long broken the previous post-war record of 83 days for forming a coalition in 2013. Her new goal is an Easter resurrection, 170 days after September’s disastrous election. After all this waiting, even Godot is getting impatient.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

In principle, it’s good news for Europe. On January 12, Germany’s coalition hopefuls finally agreed on an outline for the next four years. Remarkably, they put European reform at the top of their list. The very first chapter of their 28-page agreement, headlined “A New Beginning for Europe,” promises the EU more money, changes in governance of the euro, and much closer cooperation with France.

“The renewal of the EU will only succeed, if Germany and France work together will all their might,” the agreement says. “We want to develop common positions on all important questions of European and international policy and move ahead in those areas where the EU with all 27 member states is not able to act.”

Brave words and good intentions. But don’t break out the champagne yet, not even if you are Emmanuel Macron, President of France, and truly desperate for Berlin to move forward on EU reform. Ever since Germans elected a new Bundestag on September 24, the country’s political process has been excruciatingly slow. With Angela Merkel, the country has had a capable caretaker chancellor, but without the power to enter into new commitments.

As prospective government partners, conservatives and Social Democrats also say they want a common European framework for minimum wage and social security systems. Big companies, especially tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon should be properly taxed. European defense policy should be filled with life, and the EU needs a common foreign and human rights policy.

“We are in favor of allotting specific budget resources to economic stabilization and social convergence, and for supporting structural reforms in the eurozone, which could be the starting point for a future investment budget for the eurozone,” the agreement says. “We are also willing to agree to higher German contributions to the EU budget.”

Yet even this latest paper, laboriously negotiated and full of details, isn’t actually a coalition agreement. It only represents the outcome of the “sounding-out talks” that the potential government partners held to see whether there they would have enough of a common base to even enter coalition talks proper.

A lot of steps remain to be taken before a new government can actually be sworn in: the prospective partners must get party approval for the outcome of the sounding-out talks before being able to enter formal coalition negotiations. Even if those come to a positive conclusion, that result once again has to be approved by all three parties concerned. Everything would have to go really well to have a government in place before Easter.

What a staggeringly inefficient process—and what a shock to Germans and other Europeans alike to see Merkel, who always seemed entirely in control of the most stable country in Europe, floundering so badly. With every day that goes by without a new government in place, Merkel’s standing within her party, her country, and the world erodes further. And the most difficult hurdle may still be to come.

An Unhappy Base

After Merkel’s attempts to form a coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats fell apart, the SPD very reluctantly agreed to rethink its position—but large parts of the SPD’s base remain unhappy about this decision. SPD leader Martin Schulz and his colleagues dare not go over their heads. That is why, at every step of the way, an extra party congress is needed to give its approval.

This has given the Social Democrats a strong hand in negotiating with Merkel and her conservatives. In fact, much of the sounding-out agreement is now geared towards pleasing their party base. Germany’s prospective coalition agreed to spend more on education and employment, increase payments for pensioners and child benefits, and moderately reduce taxes on low incomes. The pro-European bend of the deal is also largely due to the SPD’s input.

Conservative “wins” include limiting the number of refugees admitted to Germany and not increasing taxes on high incomes. Altogether, the outcome on domestic issues is far less ambitious than on Europe.

To approve the deal, the SPD has convened a party congress for January 21; whether it will agree is anybody’s guess. Over the past days, a regional party meeting already voted to reject the agreement. Several prominent Social Democrats also publicly criticized the deal and demanded improvements on a multitude of issues. This was sharply rejected by Merkel’s conservative bloc, which in turn gave rise to more SPD outrage.

Should this end in a “No” to the deal, all three party leaders involved in the talks face disaster. At the head of the SPD, Martin Schulz is certain to be replaced right away. The CSU’s leader Horst Seehofer would also be likely to go. And Angela Merkel? She may not even want to lead her party into new elections, let alone have the authority to do so.

Even so, we aren’t there yet; a “Yes” is still possible, and even likely. In that case, Germany would finally get its new government and Merkel would return as chancellor. In domestic terms, this may be boring. For Europe, it would actually be the best outcome.

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© REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

It was hailed as a breakthrough: nearly four months after the election Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats agreed to launch formal negotiations on forming a government together, again. In a 28-page draft policy agreement, the negotiating parties listed the compromises they had spent weeks wrangling over – and skirted around the issues where no agreement could be reached.

During negotiations, the two sides appeared ready to drop German-authored plans to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020 because it simply wouldn’t be feasible – the country has only managed to slash 27 percent until now. In the end, however, they kicked the can further down the road, appointing a commission to create a blueprint for reducing emissions as quickly as possible and gradually phasing out coal power.

It is a glaring departure from the green image Germany has built. Just a handful of years ago, the country’s Energiewende, or energy transition, was seen as a shimmering example of how the world could beat climate change that the German term itself—rather than “energy transition” or “clean energy revolution”—was being used in American media.  This was its raison d’etre – and the physicist-chancellor Angela Merkel appeared fully convinced of its promise, which she showcased in international climate conferences, winning her the moniker die Klimakanzlerin, or the climate chancellor.

And even though renewable energy generation in Germany broke more records in 2017, growing to cover an astounding 36.1 percent of the country’s electricity needs, that won’t offset the country’s rising carbon emissions enough to meet its own goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent in 2020.

Breaking Up Monopolies

Germany commenced its Energiewende less than two decades ago by breaking up the monopoly of a few giant utilities and setting market conditions for wind and solar power, as well as bioenergy, to become one of the economy’s primary sources of power. In addition, it created over 300,000 jobs, local revenue for rural areas, and cutting-edge exportable technology.

Inspired by Germany’s ingenuity and gumption, I undertook to learn everything I could about Germany’s visionary experiment by visiting the citizen-prosumers on the ground from the Baltic Sea to the Black Forest, and interviewing the Energiewende’s thinkers. I authored a blog about Germany’s clean energy revolution and wrote dozens of articles for English-language media. For five years, I lived and breathed the Energiewende, convinced that Germany was a determined pioneer in an effort that would keep our planet livable for future generations of human beings and other species.

Yet, despite Merkel’s vigorous push after the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant in Japan in spring 2011, Germany’s commitment to the mission has since fallen off dramatically. It is now a middling contender in the field of climate protection, ranked a lowly 29 out of 61 countries worldwide by the NGO Germanwatch. About two years ago, I noticed that there was ever less new hailing from Germany to write about. I cancelled my blog.

There’s a good measure of hypocrisy in the way Germany continues lecturing other countries like the US about climate protection while it falls ever further behind on its own 2020 emissions reduction goals. As much as Washington deserves a lecturing on the topic, Germany no longer has the cachet to do it.

Playing the Spoiler

These days Berlin even plays the spoiler, throwing its weight around in the EU to the detriment of progressive environmental legislation, as it is currently doing on the EU’s long-awaited climate and energy package—seminal legislation, currently in draft form, that will underpin the transformation of the European energy system until 2030. Germany has pushed to weaken provisions that would open up energy markets to citizens’ initiatives and other new business entrants – the very actors who ignited the grassroots Energiewende in the first place.

One reason for Germany’s demise as climate leader is not public opinion, which overwhelmingly backs the Energiewende and is fearful of climate change. On the contrary, it’s Germany’s grand coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), which will most probably be renewed this year for another four-year term. Indeed, Germany’s two biggest parties came to power four years ago talking not about hitting Germany’s emissions targets or prompting the Energiewende’s next exciting breakthrough, but rather about how to slow it down. And this they did.

Chancellor Merkel still pays lip service to climate issues, but her party’s commitment to Germany’s automobile industry is obviously greater. She’s illustrated this by pushing to lower emissions standards for cars made in the EU, allowing the EU carbon trading scheme to collapse, and turning a blind eye to the testing standards of Germany’s diesel gas-guzzlers.

The Social Democrats, her partner in office, haven’t been any better, putting the interests of a small number of coal miners and recalcitrant fossil fuel companies above those of the planet. Germany burns more coal than any other country in Europe; state-subsidized, coal-fired plants provide 37 percent of its power, most of it from lignite, the dirtiest kind of coal. At the recent UN climate summit (in Bonn, Germany, of all places), the Germans refused to join a coalition of 19 countries led by Canada and the UK to set a date for ending coal use. In fact, new coal pits are still being excavated in the west of the country.

The grand coalition’s tepid endorsements of renewables and its changes to support systems have caused investment in renewables to drop to its lowest since 2007; permits to build onshore wind parks have been capped at just 2.8 GW a year through 2019—a gross underachievement compared to the 4.6 GW of installments in 2016.  New investment in and deployment of solar power is lagging in a similar way. Moreover, half-hearted energy savings measures failed to stem the still-rising volumes of oil and gas used in transportation, heating, and industry.

Wrong Moment

This is absolutely the wrong moment for Germany to be curbing renewables. Despite the fact that Germany’s renewables have replaced many gig watts of fossil-fuel generated energy, Germany’s emissions have not declined significantly over the last decade. Although this is in part explained by the economy’s growth, the country’s total emissions increased every year over the last three years.

Merkel long ago forfeited her title as climate chancellor, failing time and again to stand up for the climate. She barely mentioned the environment in her election campaign this year (the Social Democrat candidate Martin Schulz wasn’t any better on the topic).

While it’s hard to fall lower than US federal climate protection polices under the Trump administration, I’m not surprised by Trump’s negligence. But I hadn’t expected Germany to balk so suddenly.

After Trump’s election victory and the looming prospect of America’s retreat from the global stage, there was immediate speculation that Germany would assume the mantle of leader of the free world. This, of course, was never a serious option considering Germany’s humble military and skittish geopolitics. But it could have stepped in and led the world on climate protection.

Not so long ago, German energy specialists immodestly called the Energiewende “Germany’s gift to the world.” It was. Now, the least Germany can do is not to play the spoiler.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

The blame game started right away. For four weeks, Germany’s politicians had half-heartedly tried to put together a workable governing coalition; now, they are energetically devoting themselves to blaming each other for the failure of these talks. None of this spells anything good, neither for Germany nor indeed for the European Union as a whole. “This night has produced nothing but losers,” Spiegel Online commented.

It was close to midnight on November 19 when the German liberals, led by an exhausted Christian Lindner, announced they were walking out. “It has become obvious that the four partners in the talks cannot develop any common idea of the modernization of our country and in particular cannot develop a basis of trust in one another,” Lindner said. “It is better not to govern than to govern in the wrong way.”

That may be true. Still, it was Lindner who actually broke up the talks, so Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc joined the Greens in pinning the blame on him. As a grey morning dawned in Berlin, all four negotiating partners were desperately afraid of the backlash from voters should new elections turn out to be unavoidable.

“It is a day of – at least – profound reflection on how Germany continues,” Merkel said. “But I wanted to tell you that as chancellor, as caretaker chancellor, I will do everything to make sure that this country is being led well through these difficult weeks.”

What Next?

What are the options now? The Social Democrats once again excluded another grand coalition, and none of the other parties intends to enter talks with the far-right Alternative for Germany. Merkel could attempt to form a minority government. If all fails, there would have to be new elections, but it is not at all clear whether they would be more likely to yield a workable government.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on the country’s parties to try again. His office is largely ceremonial, but on issues of calling new elections, the president does have an important role to play. “You can’t just hand this back to the voters,” Steinmeier said. “I expect everybody to be willing to talk.”

Yet Steinmeier has no actual power to force anybody back to the table, nor is Merkel the unassailable leader of even two years ago. Her Christian Democratic Union suffered heavy losses in the elections of September 24, mostly due to her policy on refugees. The failure of the “Jamaica coalition” – the parties’ colors are the same as those of the Caribbean island’s flag – leaves her in an even shakier position. Merkel certainly showed little public leadership during the now-failed coalition talks, adding to the unrest within her own party. In the run-up to the election campaign last year, it took her a long time to decide whether she even wanted to stand again. After twelve years in the chancellery, Angela Merkel increasingly gives the impression of having lost her appetite for power. In these grey November days, a sense of duty may be all that keeps her at the helm.

However, none of the other party leaders seemed very hungry for a chance to shape policy in Germany and Europe either. This is despite the fact that the German economy is doing better than ever, public coffers are well-filled, and EU partners seem more receptive to reforms than they have been in decades. But leading politicians in Berlin seemed far more concerned with the atmosphere within their party base than with their country’s destiny.

Germany, like so many Western democracies, isn’t just seeing its political party system fragmenting into ever smaller bits; it is also seeing each remaining bit, through a profound fear of risk, become increasingly paralysed. “Truly excellent news for our country,“ tweeted Jörg Meuthen, party leader of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). “The Jamaica experiment has failed before it ever started.” This coalition was a high-risk experiment to start with. The four parties involved only ever began the negotiations because the elections of September 24 did not yield any other majority constellation once the Social Democrats had ruled out continuing their coalition with Merkel. None of the partners had enough trust in any other – or even their own party members – to be confident about going into government together.

Lacking Trust

There was Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which is in full panic because of miserable polls. After governing Bavaria for 60 years, the party could well be voted out of power in regional elections in 2018. CSU leadership, meanwhile, has become embroiled in a poisonous leadership struggle which made it all but impossible to agree to compromises in the Berlin talks.

Christian Lindner’s liberals, the FDP, have a different story. Their last coalition with Merkel’s conservatives – from 2009 to 2013 – left them looking so bad that they nearly disappeared off the political stage altogether. After their comeback in September, there is nothing that they fear more than being seen to sell out their ideals and policies for the sake of power.

It was the Greens who were the most willing to be constructive. It has been a long time – twelve years – since they were in government at the federal level. In the September elections, they did rather better than expected, so they were bound to be particularly wary of new elections. But in contrast to the time when Joschka Fischer ruled the party, the Greens today have competing leaders, which makes it very difficult for any of them to make concessions.

All of this led to a record-breaking four weeks of initial “sounding out” talks which never even ripened into proper coalition negotiations. Refugee policy remained a particularly thorny issue, as did public finances, but the key factor was a lack of will to actually govern the country together.

If there are new elections, it might take until April to form a new government. This isn’t just bad news for Germany, but for other EU countries as well, particularly France under Emmanuel Macron. For the foreseeable future, reforming the European Union is the last thing that politicians in Berlin will be thinking about.

The post What a Mess! appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Stefanie Loos

Late on September 24, when nearly all the votes in the federal election had been counted, Germany’s far-right populists celebrated an astonishing success. Not only were they going to have the third largest group in the new Bundestag – in Saxony, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) received a staggering 27 percent of the vote, making it the strongest political force in this East German state.

During the campaign, the AfD played very skillfully on fears of immigration and the spread of Islamic fundamentalism that run particularly strongly in eastern Germany. But it also tapped a huge reservoir of resentment against the country’s political elites, vilifying them as “cartel parties” and “pseudo elites.”

As a result, the AfD’s share of the vote was twice as high in eastern Germany – with an average of 21.5 percent – compared to the old West German states. “We are going to kick the old parties in the butt,” one AfD supporter crowed on television during the election night.

There is a reason the anti-establishment message plays so well in the former German Democratic Republic: East Germans simply aren’t part of the establishment in Germany. A study published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft, a non-profit association dedicated to overcoming the gap between East and West, shows that despite 27 years of reunification and Angela Merkel in the chancellery, East Germans are still totally under-represented among German elites.

The study, “East German Elites: Dreams, Realities, and Perspectives,” makes for an astonishing read.

Here are some key figures from the study:

Top positions across Germany generally go to West Germans. While East Germans make up 17 percent of the total population, they only hold four to five percent of senior jobs in administration. Even in eastern Germany, only 13.3 percent of judges and 5.9 percent of court presidents are East Germans.

Every single one of the country’s 500 richest families is from West Germany. The 30 biggest publicly traded companies are managed by a total of 190 board members, and all but three of them are West Germans. Even in the hundred largest East German companies (not that they are very large), two thirds of the top management jobs are held by West Germans.

And so it continues: Out of 200 generals or admirals in the German army, two are East Germans. Out of 22 university directors in East Germany, three are East Germans. East Germany has 13 regional newspapers, yet West Germans manage all but two of them.

“When I started my job in Bonn in 2000, I doubled the number of East Germans,” Thomas Krüger, a former GDR dissident and now president of the Federal Agency for Civic Education in Bonn, said in a recent newspaper interview. “Where before there had been one East German, there now were two – out of a total of 200 employees.”

“Cultural Colonialism”

Politics is where the balance works best, because elected officials need to be confirmed by their bases. Even then, 30 percent of ministerial postings in the Eastern state governments are taken up by West Germans. In contrast, in nearly three decades, only one East German has managed to serve in a West German state cabinet.

“With Angela Merkel as chancellor and former Federal President Joachim Gauck, at first glance things may look different,” Krüger said in the interview. “But across the (East German), the dominance of West Germany among the elites continues to be experienced as a cultural colonialism.”

The East German revolution of 1989, like all revolutions, consisted of replacing the elites – the people working for the communist party and state institutions, including the secret police, the Stasi. But in contrast to what happened in Eastern Europe, the old East German elite was not replaced by new local leaders, but by West Germans who brought their political system to the former GDR and occupied nearly all key positions to manage the change.

This was initially welcomed by many East Germans, who wished for better government and untarnished leaders. They did not expect the transformation of their society and economy to bring such pain in terms of jobs, security, and social structures. Soon, East Germans came to see the West Germans (“Wessis”) as brash, arrogant, and shallow; West Germans saw East Germans (“Ossis”) as self-effacing, passive, and sometimes lazy. Raj Kollmorgen, one of the authors of the study, says that to this day East Germans are stuck with an inferior image. West Germans build their careers through networks of power, recruiting people of a similar background and therefore perpetuating the discrepancy in the careers between Ossis and Wessis.

As a result, many East Germans feel alienated from the political, economic, and social institutions of unified Germany. “There is a de facto gap in the representation of East German interests, perspectives, and experiences,” said Iris Gleicke, a Social Democrat from Thuringia who serves as the federal government’s Commissioner for Eastern (German) Affairs.

Gleicke quoted a 2014 poll by sociologists from Halle that found that almost three out of four West Germans feel “politically at home” in the Federal Republic, while not even half of East Germans do. “If you leave out the East, you will to have to pay for that at some point in time,” she said.

Part of that payment is the East’s high support for the AfD, though the populist surge has other causes as well – after all, right-wing populism is also flourishing in central and eastern European countries that came out of communist rule without an imported elite.

Yet if East Germans remain left out, Germany as a whole will suffer – not only in terms of democratic representation, but also because it is depriving itself of a great pool of talent and experience.

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© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Until the last moment of the German election that took place on September 24, large-scale, overt interference by the Kremlin was considered a real possibility. However, in the end Germans were spared the brazen meddling that marred elections in both the United States and France. Yet with the openly pro-Russian Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) strong showing securing its place in the Bundestag, Moscow has every reason to be satisfied with the outcome of the vote. In fact, data collected by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), an initiative run by the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC, shows that Kremlin-oriented networks engaged in low-level, covert interference in Germany. Most notably, these networks actively supported AfD online by targeting the German public with the same type of disinformation they used in the United States.

Since July, ASD has been monitoring the activity of Kremlin-oriented actors on Twitter in the United States via its Hamilton 68 dashboard. Just before the German election, ASD added Artikel 38, a similar tool that monitors the activity of Kremlin-oriented Twitter accounts in Germany. The researchers at ASD trawled through thousands of followers of Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik and used three metrics – influence, exposure, and in-groupness – to narrow the initial list down to 1,100 accounts, 600 in the United States and 500 in Germany, that consistently echo Moscow’s political line. The two dashboards now automatically monitor these accounts in real time and distill their content into an analyzable format.

The information derived from the dashboards reveals that topics and themes promoted in both countries were very similar. In both Germany and the US, Moscow amplifies right-wing content in an attempt to exacerbate pre-existing socio-political divisions. In Germany, Artikel 38 shows that the Kremlin’s messaging follows three broad axes: xenophobic coverage of immigrants; anti-“establishment” attacks, directed at Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular; and support for AfD. Together, the themes pushed by the network target the most salient vulnerabilities of German democracy.

Xenophobic content pervades the stories tweeted by the network. A third of the 122 URLs it promoted between September 13 and September 27 directed viewers to anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic content. The tweeted stories portray immigration as a security threat and seek to stir Germans’ fears of an “Islamization” of their country. Out of 37 xenophobic stories promoted by the network, 23 portray immigrants as either criminals or terrorists. One leitmotiv concerns rapes allegedly committed by refugees. Other stories imply a link between (Muslim) immigration and terrorism. For instance, one article reported that four Syrian refugees with links to the terror group Jabhat al-Nusra were on trial for murder before a German court.

Stories that appeal to xenophobic instincts are often linked to another type of coverage that criticizes the “establishment” forces responsible for the influx of supposedly dangerous and irredeemably alien refugees. Anti-establishment content primarily focuses on Merkel and on the mainstream media outlets accused of dancing to her tune. Over the studied period, 15 URLs criticize, or even criminalize, Merkel for her way of handling Germany’s refugee crisis. These posts claim that by illegally admitting large numbers of refugees, Merkel not only sacrificed Germans’ security, but also started the steady dismantlement of German democracy and rule of law. A particular link that was among the top ten stories for three consecutive days explains why “Merkel belongs behind bars.”

Other pieces focus on “Merkel’s accomplices.” Most of them target the mainstream media, accused of censoring reports critical of Merkel and her refugee policy. Two of the most retweeted stories reported that the German public broadcaster ZDF had uninvited the relative of one of the victims of the terrorist attack that occurred in Berlin last December from a show with the chancellor. Other articles pushed by the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany focus on alleged instances of censorship and on cover-ups by state authorities, most notably by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

By amplifying xenophobic and anti-establishment views, the network pushes the same narratives as AfD. But the network goes further than promoting ideas; it directly promotes the radical right-wing party. Since the launch of Artikel 38, AfD has dominated the hashtags, topics, and stories promoted by the dashboard. Over the period analyzed, #afd was the most tweeted hashtag, either the most or second-most important topic discussed, and the subject of a significant share of the articles pushed by the network. These articles, 36 altogether, serve two main purposes.

Firstly, they seek to create the image of a powerful AfD. Before Germans went to the polls, the network actively promoted pieces that suggested that the party’s support base might be far greater than expected. After September 24, the network was abuzz with posts that cheered the AfD’s “triumph” and gloated at the establishment’s poor assessment of the party’s real strength. Secondly, the articles aim to “expose” what the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany calls the establishment’s “witch-hunt” against AfD. According to this narrative, before the election, the other parties, mainstream media, and other “establishment” forces were accused of using censorship, fake scandals, and possibly election fraud to prevent AfD’s inevitable triumph. Having failed at their attempts, the “establishment” now tries to downplay AfD’s victory and threatens to fight, rather than engage, the party in parliament.

Honing the Message

While Moscow’s messaging is strikingly similar in Germany and in the US, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany does have some idiosyncrasies. For instance, it plays on Germans’ strong concern for environmental issues and climate change. This is reflected in both the hashtags and topics tweeted by the network, which regularly reference issues like nuclear waste, EU regulations for the weed-killer glyphosate, and even the German recycling system. The natural disasters that recently struck the Americas were given sustained attention by the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany. On September 21, six of the 10 most trending hashtags related to hurricanes Harvey, Jose, Irma, and Maria. The network exploited these catastrophes to promote conspiracy theories, while a website that accuses US research institutes of weather manipulation and of using climate as a strategic weapon is frequently among the most-tweeted URLs of the network.

Beyond the small thematic idiosyncrasies, the dashboards also reveal significant differences between the German and American information environments. Some of these differences are intrinsic to the platform monitored, with Twitter being a much more powerful public opinion influencer in the US than in Germany. In the US, Twitter is a behemoth boasting approximately 70 million active users. In Germany, the social network never really caught on, and hovers at around a million active users. Activities on Twitter thus reach barely more than one percent of Germans directly. Of course, Twitter may still have an indirect effect: while most Germans get their news from traditional media, Twitter plays an outsized role in influencing journalists, who are on the platform and sometimes amplify or repeat its content.

Not only does the platform reach a far smaller audience, it is also used far more “passively” in Germany than in the United States. This is reflected in the dashboards. In Germany, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network rarely posts more than 20,000 tweets a day, whereas in the United States, it rarely falls below the 20,000-tweet mark. This is further reflected in the fact that the content pushed by the networks sees a far smaller number of retweets in Germany than in the United States – a clear indicator that Germans interact less with messages posted by others. For instance, between September 25 and 27, the five most-tweeted posts were retweeted an average amount of 204 times in the United States versus an average of 39 times in Germany.

Another significant difference between each country’s Kremlin-oriented Twitter network is the number and weight of sources each one uses. In Germany, the content promoted by Moscow sympathizers emanates largely from a small number of single-authored fringe blogs. Large national or local media outlets are seldom referred to. To some extent, it seems that content promoted by Russia is restricted to a niche audience and is isolated from the broader public debate.

The situation is very different in the United States, where Russia has a much larger number of websites whose messages it can amplify. Small sites analogous to the German fringe blogs are more numerous and appear to draw from a larger pool of contributors. More importantly, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in the United States relies heavily on content from large outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News. These big organizations allow the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network to be far more embedded in the American public debate than in the German one.

Moscow adopts the same propaganda strategy on both sides of the Atlantic. It uses social media to bolster the political extremes, the far-right in particular, and extend the reach and toxicity of their divisive rhetoric. But analyzing the dashboard’s data suggests that the Kremlin’s online tactics might be better suited to the United States than to Germany. The Kremlin-oriented Twitter network reaches more people in the US, and the American public more readily engages with content pushed by Moscow. In addition, Russian online campaigns in the US can draw on large media outlets and get to people beyond the restricted confines of the far-right.

That’s not to say that Germany is immune to Kremlin interference. AfD has learned from, and largely adopted, the online tactics Moscow used to great effect in other Western democracies. Moreover, as a party in Parliament, AfD is now very likely to have a much-improved access to media channels that have real sway over the German public. If the far-right party maintains its openly Pro-Russian line in the coming months, Moscow will have a Trojan horse perfectly poised to take the German informational landscape by storm.

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© REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

As the mist lifts, the road on from Germany’s federal election is slowly becoming clear. The worst result for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) since 1949 will not prevent her securing a fourth term to pull even with her four-term mentor Helmut Kohl.

Her new alliance is likely to be an untested so-called Jamaica coalition, based on the party colors of Merkel’s CDU (black), the liberal Free Democrats (FDP, yellow) and Greens. And while the journey to Jamaica will require considerable effort and creativity, with no new administration likely before December, Merkel loyalists insist Kingston is a worthwhile destination even if the lack of direct flights means a strenuous row-boat journey looms.

But the arrival of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the next Bundestag, with 12.6 percent of the poll and 93 seats, changes the atmosphere in German politics. It’s obvious that Germany shifted right on election day, with the center-right pulling in 56 percent of the total vote. This marks the end of the consensual years of what I call “the Claudia Roth Republik.”

For those outside the Berlin bubble, Claudia Roth is a well-meaning ex-Green Party leader. Beloved and mocked in equal measure, the left-wing politician’s default reaction to opposing views is cartoon-like emotional outrage. In that she has always reminded me of Helen Lovejoy, the over-excited pastor’s wife in “The Simpsons” whose answer in every difficult situation is: “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”

In the Claudia Roth Republik, the consensual political center was the place to be, in tune with the Zeitgeist of Germany’s World Cup generation: open and cosmopolitan, a people increasingly at-ease with their German identity. Anyone who visited this republic headed home again convinced the Germans had undergone a collective personality transplant, with ease replacing angst.

After the Earthquake

But nothing lasts forever, particularly not after the refugee crisis earthquake. Germany’s initial welcome to asylum seekers in 2015 surprised everyone, including the locals, but things began to cool somewhere between the 2015 New Year’s Eve attacks on women in Cologne and the 2016 Christmas market truck attack in Berlin that left twelve dead. Even though the perpetrators in both cases were not Syrian refugees, the cool, liberal consensus began to crumble.

Behind this new facade: an old, deep-seated German fear about loss of control, quickly pounced on by the AfD. Since then, despite steady growth and record employment, a new Zukunftsangst is palpable as Germany returns to the real world and departs the Claudia Roth for “the Roland Koch Republik.”

Roland Koch was once the politician German lefties loved to hate. A take-no-prisoners hard-right CDU governor in the western state of Hesse, he played the conservative keyboard with ease until 2010 when he dramatically quit politics for a – so far not terribly distinguished – private sector career.

A year ago, as the mood began to darken, I sought him out to ask why he left and whether he felt needed again. He left politics, he told me, because Merkel had blocked his path with a consensual, low drama style of politics that had made his approach redundant.

Why, I wanted to know, had Merkel’s centrist CDU neglected his old right-wing conservative clientele? He was as puzzled as I was and concerned this left it easy for the AfD to pick off older right-wing CDU voters alarmed over the refugee crisis.

But having felt surplus to requirement, Koch told me he sensed the wind changing again. For his traditional voters, he said, Merkel’s “we can manage this” mantra in the refugee crisis missed the forest for the trees. “The real question now is, ‘Do we want this?’” he told me. “And large sections of the European and German population don’t want this, a fact that many politicians underestimated.”

This was blindingly obvious in recent weeks on the election trail with Merkel. She was greeted with furious protest wherever she went, culminating in a final, vicious stand-off on Munich’s Marienplatz. Two days later the AfD celebrated its historic result. Bulking up its far-right populist voter base were a million reactivated non-voters and another million disappointed former CDU and Bavarian CSU voters. Minutes after polls closed, CSU leaders said the AfD success was the logical conclusion of their failure to defend their right-wing flank.

Rhetorical Mind-Lock

This exposed flank was a consequence of the Claudia Roth Republik, conservatives argue, where any person or party with positions right of the center risked being labelled a far-right extremist. Conservatives who expressed law-and-order views, once mainstream in the Kohl-era CDU, were shouted down in this Germany as potential racists or proto-fascists.

In the Claudia Roth Republik, the golden rule was “das darf nicht sein,” a kind of rhetorical mind-lock which roughly translates as “that must not be.” The AfD lured people into their camp by shattering this logic with the rhetorical hammer of “das wird man wohl doch mal sagen dürfen” – “you have to be able to say this.”

As the dust settles, the challenge for Merkel and Germany’s political establishment is to prevent further drift to the right-wing fringes. The chances are good, given post-election polls suggested some 60 percent of AfD support was a protest vote.

But winning these voters back can only happen when their conservative, liberal, or moderate right views are no longer demonized and silenced. Germany has to rediscover its capacity for controversial debates on the big issues of concern – security, migration, and globalization – that respects competing opinions within the limits of the democratic mainstream. That is the alternative to Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland.

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