© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

When more than a million mostly Arab and Muslim refugees poured into Germany in 2015, large groups of smiling Germans gathered at train stations to greet them. They came with multilingual posters, teddy bears, and hot chocolate.

It was an emotional moment in Germany’s postwar history, as if the whole country was breathing a sigh of relief: Maybe we got it right this time? Maybe we can put the past behind us? But the collective exhale was conditional: What now?

It was clear to me at the time that the moment wouldn’t last. I was living in Neukölln, one of Berlin’s largest, poorest, and most ethnically diverse districts. Home to Arab communities, among many others, Neukölln is known for falafel and crime gangs of Arab origin. A walk down Sonnenallee, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare, often recalls memories of Ramallah—clogged with traffic and lined with shops whose Arabic signage extends as far as the eye can see.

It may look like first-generation immigrant life. Except many here and across Germany, home to an estimated four million Muslims, are going into their third generation—or more. And that’s one way they’re referred to here: die dritte Generation, not as Germans, regardless of birthplace, passport, or language.

Tolerated but Never Accepted

The Jews have had it similar, for longer. Their roots on Germanic land going back to Roman times arguably makes them more German than the “Germans.” Still, Jews were excluded from the concept of German nationhood, which coalesced in the decades leading to Prussian-led unification in 1871. It was the awakening of the European nation-state, making it necessary to compete with, and fend off, rival powers.

Establishing das Volk, the German nation, became a defensive (and economically attractive) bond of language, land, and religion that Germany’s tiny minority of Jews fell outside of. No matter how hard they tried—with military service, contributions to German culture and financial well-being, and even conversion—they could be tolerated as citizens of the German state, but not really accepted as members of the German nation. Like any national project, German nationalists needed to define who was out just as much as who was in.

We all know how this narrow concept of nationalism ended, and that’s where Erinnerungskultur —Germany’s reckoning with its murder of much of Europe’s Jewry and assorted other wartime crimes, now a cornerstone of its postwar sense of self—begins. And stumbles, because Germany’s story doesn’t start in 1933; thus, any effective remembrance culture can’t either.

For Germans and outside observers alike, it can be easy to assume present-day Germany knows what it’s doing. In one form or another, Germany has had centuries of influence on Western culture and global affairs, and it’s credited with the formation of organized public bureaucracy. But in terms of liberal democracy, Germany is comparatively new and untested.

An Installed Program of Remembrance

Born-again Germany derives from American Cold War policy, which converted the defeated Reich from a threat to the West into a tool for the West’s protection. Truer political autonomy can only be traced to around 1990. When West absorbed East, Germany became a new country, one with differing views of its national values. Since then, Germany has been held to the standard of an advanced Western power, with little regard for its eastern identity.

Erinnerungskultur was central to “re-educating” the German nation, starting as early as spring 1945 when US forces compelled German civilians to tour death camps. Though Germany is now widely praised for openly embracing Erinnerungskultur as a national responsibility, it was only after the code had been written and installed that the program could run on its own.

An entire culture of remembrance has since been pursued with zeal: memorials and monuments, commemorations, educational curricula, public programs, and political rhetoric, symbols and structures—all to serve the refrain: nie wieder. Never again.

But it’s far from clear what nie wieder actually means. It might form the basis of a more open and progressive society, but Germany is hardly a leader in extending rights, opportunities, and protections to women, minorities, and other vulnerable groups. Change comes slowly to its conservative culture.

The country is still struggling with what to make of Turkish Gastarbeiter, many of whom went on to defy German assumptions by staying permanently after initially being invited to further boost West Germany booming economy. So, when the massive influx of refugees arrived, uninvited, in 2015, the rapid descent from euphoria to fear came as little surprise. The German nation, by and large, was not prepared to absorb them.

A Matter of Self-Conception

Germany’s problem is not the lack of a liberal state. Its history provides a couple of examples of extending legal rights to unwanted or outside groups, at times more comprehensively than its contemporaries. But without the support of a liberal nation those rights can quickly disappear.

That has been and remains Germany’s problem, which Erinnerungskultur fails to address. The German nation may be quick to criticize its fringe for marching in defense of the so-called Abendland (or Occident), but it’s blind to its mainstream’s own stubborn Abendland assumptions. Germany’s enormous public media system, for example, is a national institution, a reflection of the country it is built to inform. Although funded by a fee every household in Germany is obligated to pay, church services and Christian prayer enjoy a fixed slot in regular programming.

When I enquired why, I was told that Christianity is part of Germany’s Selbstverständnis—a matter of self-conception—and therefore a key component of their public service mission. That is not only factually inaccurate, given the steady stream of Germans leaving the church and the rise in those identifying as non-Christian and non-believers, but it sends a powerful signal about who is, and is not, considered part of the nation.

When Jews, Muslims, and other groups fall victim to far-right violence, the German response is couched in the language of tolerance, not acceptance. State protection is afforded on the basis of human rights, not German rights, because these groups are considered outsiders even though in many cases they are not. The German state may want everyone to feel welcome, but the German nation does not necessarily want everyone to feel included. Having or receiving Staatsangehörigkeit (citizenship, but literally “belonging to the state”), is not the same as having Herkunft (ethnonational descent).

A substantive Erinnerungskultur would naturally foster broad public support for a strong European Union, whose core function is to check the very nationalist hubris Erinnerungskultur warns against. Yet Germany’s embrace of the EU stops largely with perfunctory political rhetoric and positive public opinion polls. Judged by deeds, Germany’s trade imbalance, savings glut, and resistance to the ECB’s loose monetary policy have kept the EU in limbo. It has repeatedly kneecapped reform proposals while failing to make any of its own.

Even if the likes of Chancellor Angela Merkel do privately support more ambition at the European level, she seemingly lacks the political capital. Enough Germans seem content with an EU that is only strong enough to fulfill a very basic prerequisite: avoid war. That may have sufficed in the EU’s infancy when memories of the devastation were fresh, but 75 years later those memories are all but gone. That demands more tangible and more constructive, forward-looking arguments for turning to Brussels.

A Brewing Nativist Sentiment

By the numbers, of course, Germany has profited handsomely from the EU. But nationalism is a beast that feeds off other metrics. Nativist sentiment was already brewing prior to the emergence of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), as economic and currency crises brought out old tropes maligning Germany’s eastern and southern neighbors in the media, and public and political discourse. It’s the inadequacy of Erinnerungskultur that fails to see the cause and effect.

Germany’s far-right has exploited that inadequacy. Making everything about Auschwitz, and thus limiting remembrance to twelve years of moral and physical destruction, has allowed lesser wrongs be trivialized, relativized, or go unseen entirely. Uncertain about the ends, Erinnerungskultur has become a ritualistic end in itself, not unlike a lapsed believer who still attends church because that’s just what you do, even if you no longer know why.

With the Holocaust slipping from lived experience to historical phenomenon, Germany needs to rethink how it remembers—and why it does. It is not enough to say “never again.” Prodding a nation with guilt and shame eventually leads to spite and ambivalence. A more convincing motivation is required, which isn’t trapped in the past but focused on the future.

Much as climate change extends far beyond environmental policy, Erinnerungskultur must be part of every aspect of public policy and civil society. The German state can confront far-right violence with statements, laws, and law enforcement, but the German nation is left to address its broader longing for classification and order, impulses that pre-date the Nazi era and still linger today.

The post Germany’s Inadequate Culture of Remembrance appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Is it unsafe for Jewish men to wear the traditional kippah (or yarmulke) cap in public in modern Germany? Or should Germans of all religions wear it proudly, as a sign of solidarity?

The fact that the German government official tasked with combating anti-Semitism represented both positions within a week shows how issue has, in recent years, become more relevant for all the wrong reasons.

The official, Felix Klein, warned of rising anti-Semitism on May 25, saying, “I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah all the time and everywhere in Germany.” He blamed “society’s increasing brutalization and loss of inhibition,” adding that he had “unfortunately changed his position” on this issue in recent times.

The criticism came quickly. Jewish organizations have issued similar warnings in the past, but hearing it from a representative of the state charged with public safety was different. Michel Friedman, a former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that “the government is apparently failing to make [freedom of religion] possible for all Jewish citizens.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also got involved, saying Klein’s statement was a “capitulation” and “admission that Jews on German soil are again not safe”.

An Official Wake-up Call

By May 27, Antisemitismus-Beauftragter Klein was explaining himself to the tabloid newspaper BILD, clarifying that his warning was meant to “shake up the public” and make clear the need for action. He received some support from the current president of the Jewish council, Josef Schuster: “It has been a fact for quite some time that Jews in some big cities are potentially exposed to danger if they are recognizable as Jews.”

Klein’s week in the news culminated with an appeal for Germans to wear a kippah in solidarity. He called on citizens to show their support by attending a counter-protest in Berlin against a planned march for Al-Quds Day, a “holiday” called into being by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1970s in order to protest Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory—Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. Every year in Berlin, demonstrators display both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic signs and, with Hezbollah sympathizers and even a few neo-Nazis in their midst, shout about their hate for Jews. It is illegal in Germany to burn flags or advertise for Hezbollah, but a ban on the protest would probably not hold up in court.

The police counted about 1,000 demonstrators at this year’s march, chanting slogans like “Child murderer Israel.” Opposite the Al-Quds marchers stood about 300 counter-demonstrators, with Israeli pop music blasting through their speakers.

A Sense of Insecurity

The official statistics back up the sense of insecurity in the Jewish community. While politically motivated crime was down from 2017, it was still at its third-highest level since 2001, when the statistic was introduced. The police recorded 62 violent anti-Semitic acts in 2018, up from 37 the previous year. The violence was only a small percentage of more than 1,800 violent anti-Semitic crimes, a category that includes hate speech or signs displaying banned symbols like the swastika.

The right wing of German society is primarily responsible for these anti-Semitic crimes. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stated in May that almost 90 percent of these acts could be attributed to “right-wing crime”—as Foreign Minister Heiko Maas commented, anti-Semitism in Germany is obviously not an “import product.” The populist right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which questions Germany’s culture of atonement for the Holocaust, is on the rise in the East; the people of Chemnitz, a city in Saxony formerly known as Karl Marx City, have in the last year alone witnessed both right-wing groups making Hitler salutes before attacking foreigners and the public celebration of a professed neo-Nazi at a football match.

But neo-Nazis are far from the only culprits; Islamic anti-Semitism is also a factor. Emblematic of Jews’ growing insecurity, a video of a Palestinian asylum-seeker from Syria whipping a kippah-wearing man with a belt in Berlin’s tony Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood went viral in 2018. A recent study by the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future found that anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior are disproportionately strongly represented among Muslim minorities in western Europe. Crucially, though, the study did not find a “meaningful relationship between the Middle-Eastern migrants and the extent and form of anti-Semitism in western Europe”.

That doesn’t necessarily mean there is no Islamist element to the threat in some big German cities, as the Berlin Al-Quds march demonstrates. Two Jews were attacked at that demonstration in 2018. There were millions of Muslims in Germany well before the refugee crisis of 2015. Benjamin Steinitz of the anti-Semitism research center RIAS has argued that there are  motives “from a Muslim context” and far-left and far-right motives for the crimes, as well “daily statements from the middle of society.”

Who Drew the Swastika?

Some German conservatives, especially the AfD, are eager to emphasize the Muslim element of anti-Semitism and obscure broader society’s role in order to score political points. But critics make a good point about the questionable reliability of the statistics Seehofer quoted to say right-wingers were “90 percent” responsible. For example, the Berlin police has admitted that it attributes cases without a clear motive to right-wingers. (When the crime is painting a swastika, this is somewhat understandable.) Klein himself told the New York Times that the methodology was flawed and he has asked the government to change it.

“The right strategy”, Klein says, “is to denounce any form of anti-Semitism.” In other words, for those treating belt whip wounds or scrubbing racist insults from their doors, it is less important who did it than that they be stopped.

The post How to Wear a Kippah in Germany appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

The post Climate Children Should Be Seen, Not Heard appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Jim Young

The third chapter of The World As It Is, the memoir by Barack Obama’s former speechwriter Ben Rhodes, is entitled “A Community of Fate.” The title refers to a phrase that Rhodes proposed to include in Obama’s speech in Berlin in July 2008, but removed at the last minute. Rhodes had hoped the speech would be comparable to the famous addresses delivered by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in Berlin during the Cold War. Rhodes’s speechwriter colleague Jon Favreau had been reading a book about the Berlin airlift. In it, a German woman who experienced American “candy bombers” air dropping supplies into West Berlin said of Germany and the United States: “We are a community of fate!”

Rhodes loved the phrase “community of fate,” which he felt “echoed” the Obama campaign’s message—and JFK—and planned to use it to end the speech. Obama loved it too—in fact, Rhodes writes, it was “the one thing in the speech Obama loved the first time he read it.” Obama was even meant to try to say the original German word—Schicksalsgemeinschaft—with the help of phonetic spelling, just as JFK had said “Ich bin ein Berliner” in German in Berlin in 1963.

However, just before the speech was to be delivered at the Victory Column, Rhodes was told by a German who was translating the speech on behalf of the Obama campaign that “Eine Schicksalsgemeinschaft” was the title of one of Hitler’s first speeches to the Reichstag. Rhodes immediately pulled the phrase and considered it a lucky escape. “How had I gotten so close to such a huge mistake?” he asks himself in the book. When he told Obama why they needed to drop the phrase, Obama joked about the headlines they might have got: “Obama echoes Hitler in Berlin speech.”

The implication of the story Rhodes tell in The World As It Is is that Schicksalsgemeinschaft is one of the many German words that has been contaminated by the Nazis. Yet the word is used all the time in debates in Germany—particularly in the context of the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble have frequently talked about the EU and the eurozone as a Schicksalsgemeinschaft. So what’s going on here? Would going ahead and using the phrase “community of fate” really have been such a huge mistake as Rhodes concluded?

All In it Together

The word Schicksalsgemeinschaft expresses the idea that a particular group of people shares a common fate. Originally, it was used to describe coal miners, hostages, or the survivors of a shipwreck—in other words, groups of people that shared the possibility or experience of a disaster of some kind. But has also been applied to political communities. Put simply, it expresses the idea that we—whoever that is—are all in it together.

The Nazis used the phrase mainly in the context of the nation—Germany as a community of fate. If anything, it’s this application of the term in a national context rather than the term itself that the German political establishment seems to have rejected. the implication being that it’s not so much the concept of a “community of fate” that is problematic, but rather the idea of nation as an exclusive political community.

Yet the term is still sometimes used even in the national context without apparent consequences for the user. For example, in 2006, Christian Democrat parliamentary group leader Volker Kauder said in an interview: “Wer Deutscher werden will, muss sich auch zur deutschen Schicksalsgemeinschaft und damit zur deutschen Geschichte bekennen.” (“Anyone who wants to become German must also commit to the German community of fate and with it to German history.”) The interview was controversial not so much because of Kauder’s use of the word Schicksalsgemeinschaft but because of his use of the concept of Leitkultur—a difficult-to-translate term that suggests a monocultural vision of German society.

Rhodes was planning to describe Germany and the United States—and by implication the West—as a “community of fate.” In other words, he was planning to use the term in exactly the kind of international or transnational context that seems to be completely acceptable in Germany. It seems that he needn’t have been so worried.

However, the confusion about the term raises the question: when, exactly, should be acceptable to speak of a “community of fate” at all? There is a tendency in Europe, and in particular in Germany, to believe that the application of a concept at the European level somehow immunizes it from the problems it poses at the national level. It seems there is some feature of the European project that somehow transforms a problematic concept into an unproblematic one, but this is rarely made explicit, let alone explained. So if it is unacceptable to describe Germany as a “community of fate,” why is it acceptable to describe Europe as one?

The post Lost in Translation: Communities of Fate appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Andreas Gebert

“Zero days, zero hours, zero minutes, zero seconds,” a big LED countdown read, leaning against the stage where Bavarian Green party members celebrated. The first prognosis for the state election results had just flickered across TV screens. And there was much to shout about. The Greens had succeeded in what they had promised to do during a year-long campaign: To end the absolute majority of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union. In the end, Sunday’s election result saw the CSU support dropping dramatically to 37.2 percent, while the Greens won a record result of 17.5 percent, effectively doubling their seats in the state parliament.

This success story was splashed across headlines, running counter to the narrative that dominated the news before the election: how the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had eroded the foundation of the conservative stronghold and pushed the Bavarian ruling party to the right. The CSU had tried and failed to dabble with populist sentiment when party leader and Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer brought the government coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD) to the brink of collapse this summer by pushing for harder migrant policies.

In the end, neither the far-right nor the CSU succeeded with their focus on anti-migrant sentiment; with 10.2 percent, the AfD scored less than they did in federal elections in September 2017, leading some to interpret the Greens’ success in Bavaria as proof that the populist wave gripping European politics is over.

However, there is more to the Greens’ strong showing. A first analysis of voter migration suggests the CSU hadn’t lost as many party loyalists to the Greens as expected. Instead, it may have underestimated those who were always more skeptical of the traditional peoples’ party or Volksparteien, as parties like the CDU/CSU and SPD in Germany are called.

The Fading Charm of Brez’n, Beer, and Brass

Almost half of Bavaria’s 9.5 million-strong electorate was undecided before election day. On the final days of the campaign, the conservative state premier Markus Söder was confident to win over many of those votes for his CSU. Undecided voters traditionally turn out for the Conservatives, the established political force in Bavarian public life, having dominated Bavarian politics for six decades. But this time banking on the charm of pretzels (“Brez’n”), beer, and brass didn’t work, even though turnout increased by almost 10 to 72.4 percent.

The Greens, for their part, still decorate their platforms with large pots of sunflowers, but the party has come a long way from its image as a club for tree-huggers. Surveys by Bavarian public broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk showed that the Greens had managed to establish themselves as a party that voters saw competent on more topics than their core brand of ecology and sustainability. By offering solutions to issues from digital infrastructure to affordable housing and child care, they mirrored the variety of voter concerns rather than engaging with the anti-migration narratives of their opponents. And reflecting the plethora of daily life issues may have ultimately been a key factor of their success.

Another is their new emphasis on a more Realpolitik-driven approach, also on the federal level. This spring the Greens kicked off a two-year process to rewrite their national party manifesto and to modernize and rethink their policies. How deep-rooted this multifarious approach has become within the party could be measured by the high-profile supporters of Ludwig Hartmann and Katharina Schulze, the leaders of the Bavarian campaign. On Sunday they were joined by on of the national leaders, Robert Habeck, as well as the Bundestag’s Green caucus leader, Anton Hofreiter, the left-leaning first-generation party member Claudia Roth, as well as the party the pragmatic MP Cem Özdemir from Baden-Württemberg, where the Greens are actually leading the state government, with Angela Merkel’s CDU as the junior partner.

The Greens’ strong result brings new complexities, however. Entering the Bavarian parliament as the second largest party, with 38 out of 205 seats, they are venturing into new territory, and the question now turns to how to use this new strength: it will not get them into government, as the CSU will likely enter a coalition with the Freie Wähler party. Therefore, the Greens have to establish themselves as a broad opposition force to be reckoned with, a role the party hasn’t played in the past. The real challenge for the Greens, it seems, isn’t getting where they wanted to be, but how to move forward.

The post Bavaria Goes Green appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Berlin’s Bundestag was bristling with expectation on Wednesday when Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived for her first question-and-answer session with members of parliament.

With a nod to Prime Minister’s Questions in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, the Bundestag session was pushed through by Merkel’s junior partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Other parties supported the move to reclaim some spontaneity to the German chamber as well. The German federal parliament doesn’t have the same rhetorical tradition as the UK, and it is often a place of dry, scripted speeches, zero debate, and empty press benches. For years, political talk shows have eclipsed parliament as the true place for debate.

Yet hope springs eternal, and all eyes turned to the Bundestag at 12:30 pm. In the end, we shouldn’t have gotten our hopes up. MPs were too busy being impressed by Merkel—or grandstanding—to actually ask a tough question.

Chancellor Merkel stood in her place with no podium to hide behind, clutching papers before her nervously like a shield until she realized the questions were going to be as tough as candy floss.

The first item on the agenda was the upcoming G7 meeting in Canada. Merkel conceded that Trump’s tweeting habits, penchant for U-turns, and protectionist tariffs meant “we have a serious problem with multilateral agreements.” The deterioration in Europe’s relationship with the United States could no longer be “papered over,” the German leader admitted.

Echoing comments from last year, she said this meant Europeans “have to take care of ourselves to an extent and learn to be consistent in defense and security policy.” The German leader said she would meet Italy’s new leader Giuseppe Conte on the sidelines of the G7 meeting; Conte is heading a populist coalition, but Merkel said she didn’t see “as dramatic a problem” with European partners as the US.

Given what the EU views as US breaches of trade and environmental agreements, the Green Party wanted to know when Merkel was going to stand up to President Trump. “I don’t think linking everything together is the right approach in the German interest,” she said.

Landing No Blows

The Bundestag format allowed one minute for a question and the same time for Merkel’s answers. Observers had anticipated this would work to the advantage of the opposition, in particular the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. In the end the AfD failed to land a blow on the German leader, even when accusing her of triggering “floods of migrants” resulting in “serious damage” of attacks and rapes. AfD MP Gottfried Curio culminated what was more an extended statement than question with: “When are you going to resign?”

The chancellor brushed off the questions, insisting she had acted responsibly in a “humanitarian emergency” and noted that the European Court of Justice (CJEU) had confirmed she had acted legally as well. “The basic political decision was correct,” she said.

She dismissed a series of questions about a growing scandal over asylum applications, where at least 1,200 refugees were granted asylum status incorrectly. Merkel insisted she only knew of these specific problems “recently.”

She conceded she had appointed a new chief to the federal asylum board in September 2015 to deal with “grave structural problems” in an authority that, faced with a surge in asylum applications, had to quadruple its staff numbers. The chancellor spoke to asylum agency chief Frank-Jürgen Weise “countless times and always encouraged him to tell us of all deficits.”

In a rare moment of spontaneity, a far-right AfD parliamentarian complained that Merkel had spoken longer than the allotted one minute. Bundestag president Wolfgang Schäuble replied that the first AfD question had been too long, too. “Mind your own business,” added Schäuble, “before you give me advice.”

After mastering television debates with loud opponents, town-hall meetings with weeping teenagers, and intimidated YouTuber interviews, a confident Angela Merkel strolled out of the Bundestag chamber with the latest political novelty format behind her.

“Much of a shame as it is, it’s over,” she said with a triumphant smile, adding: “But I’ll be back.”

The post Master of Her Domain appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

How would you put the FAZ letter signed by 154 German economists into context? What does this letter signify? We have three camps in Germany by now when it comes to Europe. We have those who have a very anti-European ordoliberal, neoliberal view. You have a second camp with politically left-wing, very Keynesian, occasionally extreme views demanding a true European republic. And then you have those who are more pragmatic and less dogmatic (I would put myself in that camp).
The call by the 154 economists is a very strong euroskeptic message that basically rejects any progress on integration—and even worse, I believe, it is actually calling for an unwinding of some integration measures, for example by making it possible to exit the euro. But if you do that you’re creating something that’s akin to a fixed exchange rate system where members can leave at a whim. If that happens, markets will react and speculate against this or that country.
I’m concerned about the letter, not only because I feel the proposals are wrong-headed, but also because of the crisis it can lead to. Take Italy, where the political situation is extremely uncertain and euroskepticism is gaining ground. To demand, in such a situation, that we should be tough on Italy and force them from one day to the next to reduce debt and repay loans is to run an incredibly high risk of triggering a crisis. That’s not good economic policy; rather, it exemplifies a nationalist view on Europe that’s potentially damaging.

How influential are these economists? They are a minority even in the ordoliberal camp that had its heyday perhaps 20 years ago. And if you look at the demographics of this group it’s male-dominated, older, with a traditional outlook that lacks a European perspective. The right-wing populist Alternative für Deuschland (AfD) immediately said, “Finally a group that’s confirming and supporting what we’ve been saying”’ I don’t really want to comment on that, but it does say a lot. In short, this group is certainly not representative of German economists. It’s not even representative of German euroskeptics.

The letter warns again a “Haftungsunion” (liability union) and a “Transferunion” (transfer union), the latter implying that Germany is paying too much for Europe. Isn’t that a widely-held perception? First, Germans are very pro-European, young Germans in particular. You see that in every survey. And Germans on average understand the need for more integration, more so than people in central and eastern Europe or southern Europe. That’s an encouraging signal. Second, some people are stoking fear by saying, “All the other Europeans want is our German money.” Haftungsunion is a manipulation aimed at scaring people. It’s triggering the sentiment that we are the paymaster of Europe, that everyone else is misbehaving and all they is our money. And that’s just not the case.
If you look at the last ten years, what has Germany actually paid for? Germany has given loans. The ESM (European Stability Mechanism) has lent money to Greece, to the Greek government. What has Greece done with that money? To a large extent they have repaid their credits with German and French banks; in other words, they have protected German taxpayers. You can now complain that German banks shouldn’t have been bailed out—and I would agree with that completely—but it’s not correct to say German taxpayer money has been transferred to Greek taxpayers who are lazing on the beach, living off German money. That’s the impression a lot of people get when they read these texts but it’s simply wrong.
The third point I wanted to make is on the Haftungsunion, which one perhaps can translate as liability or insurance union. It’s about sharing risks; that’s the whole idea of Europe, the whole intention of integration. Everyone benefits from an insurance union. Take health insurance. Of course people who are healthy, who live well, who exercise regularly, eat well, and are lucky enough to be less exposed to genetic illnesses will contribute more than they will receive in benefits. Others who may have bad luck because of an accident, or because they are more exposed to specific risks, will get more money out than they pay in. So should we not have health insurance because some people benefit more than others? Of course not. Everyone benefits from it. Even if I’m the healthy one, I’m happy to pay more money knowing that I will be taken care of if I fall ill. That’s also the whole idea of Europe: risk- sharing means all of us are better off, so Haftungsunion is not a bad thing. It’s actually what Europe is about.

Yet in the run-up to the next European summit in June, this seems to be the only issue making a big splash; there’s no other real debate in Germany. Do you share that impression?  We need to have more of a debate, I agree. In January, I was one of 14 French and German economists co-writing a paper about which European and monetary union reforms are needed to balance interests and make progress. And to be honest, if the FAZ letter is the best the euroskeptics and the nationalists can come up with, then I’m not worried. If that’s the best shot they have, I think we’ll be in good shape in Germany to do the right thing, namely to have a sensible reform of monetary union.

Does that mean that you’re quite optimistic for the upcoming European summit in June? I don’t think the June summit will see a breakthrough. I think it’ll be a starting point for the French and German governments to get together and to work over the next half year to really put in place sensible reforms of monetary union, and of the EU as a whole. There is a sense of urgency if you look at Italy or at Brexit. There’s a window of opportunity now, before the European elections next spring. It’s the right time to do it. Europe is doing well economically, so now really is the time.
That’s why I’m not too optimistic for the June summit, by the way: the economy is doing too well. People don’t understand why we should undertake tough reforms now, at a time when Europe is recovering. And my answer is precisely because we’re living in relatively good times. You fix the roof when the sun is shining; you don’t repair it once it starts raining. Then it’s too late and the damage is done. But I hope and think that the German and French governments are well aware of that and that they will have made progress by the end of this year.

The post “You Fix the Roof When the Sun is Shining“ appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

With the dramatic collapse of four weeks of negotiations over the next government coalition, Germany has been thrust into unprecedented uncertainty. The coming weeks will decide whether Berlin will have to brace for new elections; Chancellor Angela Merkel will have to cobble together a minority government; or Germany will end up right where it started, with a grand coalition between Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD).

Whatever the outcome, Germany’s next government is facing a series of pressing challenges abroad. With Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, two international pillars of German foreign policy have been called into question, if not made obsolete: a European Union uniting the strategically most important countries in Germany’s proximity and a United States that serves as safeguard of European defense and global free trade.

At the same time, the domestic context in which foreign policy is conducted has changed fundamentally as well: the rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe has turned European politics and foreign policy matters into standard campaign issues. The right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) 13 percent share of the vote in the German election shows that the country’s tradition of consensus-based politics is also facing a serious threat.

Indeed, gone is the decade in which German foreign policymakers primarily had to convince national elites, be it abroad or at home. Now, volatile European electorates and the polemics of right-wing populists must be part of any equation. As seen in the ups and downs of the AfD during the Eurozone debates in 2015 and the refugee debates since, German voters are now carefully watching how German foreign policy is conducted. Once populist parties are internally consolidated, they could have the power to oust entire governments (as seen in Greece and Scandinavia) or substantially change foreign policies (Brexit being the most prominent example).

Germany is bound to lose international leverage if it does not quickly master three strategic skills to cope with these changing circumstances:

Ambiguous Vote-Seeking

First, German politicians (especially Merkel’s conservatives) should understand that it is in their own long-term interest not to polemicize foreign policies in salient national debates. In doing so, politicians end up promising something they cannot deliver and fueling right-wing populists’ anti-establishment narrative. The AfD did not grow in popularity due to the soaring number of refugee arrivals in the winter of 2015/16; instead, the party gained traction because Angela Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the CSU, vowed to close Germany’s borders to refugees and could not deliver on that promise. Similarly, the right-wing populist United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) began to rise in the polls when then-Prime Minister David Cameron could not make good on his promises to regain “a better deal” from the EU. Another danger is that established parties promise something they actually would rather not deliver (Brexit being the best example). Politicizing foreign policy matters along party lines can trigger massive collateral damage and should be avoided by all means.

In fact, a significant part of Germany’s international leverage in recent years stems from Germany’s great foreign policy consensus. The German government can play a much stronger hand in international negotiations if it presents its positions as not party-political, but national. The chances for our partners to agree to a compromise that aligns with German interests rise substantially. Take the negotiations over the eurozone crisis in spring 2015, for example. When the then-economy minister and chairperson of the junior coalition partner SPD Sigmar Gabriel backed finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) in his stance towards Greece, it was clear that his position was firm. Within months, a German-led compromise was forged.

The same party-spanning consensus enabled the introduction of the euro in the early 1990s. The common currency sparked contentious party polemics in the Netherlands and France; not so in Germany. Despite fierce opposition from some German economic experts over the introduction of the euro, no electoral campaign was ever fought over the replacement of the Deutsche Mark. Eventually, this broad consensus across nearly all German parties enabled Berlin to exert a great deal of influence in the setup of the new common currency, as all German decision makers shared one position over decades.

Our Neighbors’ Politics

 German politicians should think more about how to strategically deal with polarizing foreign policy debates in other states. European parties campaign on very different foreign policy agendas – most center-left parties campaign in favor of supranational commitments, while center-right parties only for partial intergovernmental integration; the far-right rejects most forms of cooperation that do not generate immediate domestic benefits. And these different party positions are based in countries that are highly interconnected with Germany. The next government in Berlin must carefully ponder how its actions today might influence an EU member state’s party political arithmetic tomorrow, and eventually its foreign policy the day after.

For instance, the left-wing populist Syriza government in Greece has struggled hard with Germany’s firmly refusing requests to renegotiate Greek debt. Syriza is bleeding support by having to implement strict austerity politics after having campaigned against them. The revival of the centrist camp within the Greek opposition is in part a result of this German strategy. In contrast, the perseverance of the conservative government in Spain was substantially facilitated by Germany’s easing fiscal pressure on Madrid. Former German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble used his influence to push the EU commission to ease pressure on Spain, knowing it would help Spanish conservatives secure re-election.

Often, the German ministry of finance played a central role. But the actions of nearly all of Germany’s ministries – finance, defense, interior, and foreign – have a strong impact on neighboring states’ party politics. The German interior ministry will be a major player in all matters involving European asylum and refugee matters; the ministry of defense will oversee an increase in defense spending as Germany takes on a pivotal role in the coming integration of European armed forces; the foreign ministry might develop into the strategic head of the entire German government, coordinating all these policies. Eventually, all planning staff within the German executive (especially finance, defense, interior, and foreign) should understand the implications of their actions reach well beyond Germany’s borders. Policies stemming from a key German ministry might be the fault line that triggers a party-political earthquake in a key partner state.

Persuasive Foreign Policy

German politicians should better understand how to strategically communicate European and foreign policies at home. Failing to publicly address the refugee crisis in winter 2015/16 should serve as warning example. This year’s election revealed that many German voters believed the German government completely lost control of the situation. And though it has regained that control, the AfD’s popularity goes to show that the government still has not addressed voters’ concerns over the influx of more than one million asylum-seekers and refugees. The entire handling of refugee matters over the last two years serves well as a case study on how not to communicate foreign policies.

In order to implement foreign policies that lie in long-term German national interest, lawmakers need to forge a strategy on how to communicate foreign policies to their electorate. There is a need for a strategy that aims to convince alienated conservative voters who are skeptical of the German government’s measures to address the eurozone and refugee crises. Only if moderate German politicians can convince these more conservative voters can Germany can avoid polemics over foreign policy, which would lead to drastic unilateral decisions (again: Brexit). Decisions like these would damage Europe, especially Germany itself.

The post Home, Not Alone appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

September 24 marked a watershed moment in German politics: a right-wing populist party entered the Bundestag for the first time in post-war history. There was much soul searching and hand wringing in the lead-up to the first joint parliamentary session, but the AfD’s 92 newly minted lawmakers (not including its leader, Frauke Petry, who abandoned ship because the party had moved too far to the right) managed to build a parliamentary group, appear in the Bundestag chambers, and deliver a speech without sparking controversy. That, by AfD standards, is news in itself.

It was the AfD, after all, that continuously employed highly controversial and divisive rhetoric on the campaign trail, denigrating Germany’s justice minister by claiming he was the result of “inbreeding” in his home state of Saarland, and branding Chancellor Angela Merkel an “old shrew.” The party also hired an American creative agency to design an aggressive online campaign strategy, including an ad that depicted a bloody set of tire tracks, referring to the series of Islamist terror attacks carried out with vehicles. The slogan: “The global chancellor’s tracks across Europe.”

That crude, populist behavior was noticeably absent in the Bundestag’s first session on October 24. Most of the AfD’s lawmakers appeared to blend seamlessly into the parliament’s tapestry, difficult to distinguish from their counterparts from the mainstream parties. Only their pride in being MPs set them apart from veteran politicians: AfD lawmakers posed for pictures and exalted their success on Twitter and Facebook. But they were not disruptive – certainly not in the way the other groups had feared.

What was striking, however, was the AfD’s reticence in moments where the rest of the Bundestag applauded – when Holocaust survivor Inge Deutschkron was welcomed from the podium, for example, or when MPs congratulated the newly elected president of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble.

It highlighted how the AfD perceives itself as the true underdog – a systematically oppressed group that successfully fought for a spot at the table against a powerful establishment. While the majority of German society is outraged over the populist party’s treatment of minorities, the AfD is in turn outraged by that very reaction. When Hermann Otto Solms, an MP from the liberal Free Democrats, warned in a speech against rules that “stigmatize and exclude,” AfD lawmakers applauded vociferously because they see themselves as the victims of such exclusion. Solms’ appeal to take a stand against hate speech and propaganda, however, did not garner a reaction: the AfD does not identify itself as a propagator of either.

Provocations and Half-Truths

In its first motion in the new Bundestag, the party demanded that the Alterspräsident, or chairman by seniority, be elected by age. The oldest member of parliament traditionally makes the first speech in a new session. But Germany’s mainstream parties had hastily changed the election process after realizing the oldest MP would be an AfD lawmaker who has publically trivialized the Holocaust.

That prompted AfD parliamentary group leader Bernd Baumann to hold a speech that once again revealed the AfD’s character as not a party of reason, but one of provocation and half-truths. Baumann claimed that the mainstream parties’ barring of an AfD parliamentarian from the seniority post could be compared to the time when Nazi leader Hermann Göring banished Marxist Clara Zetkin from the Bundestag and prevented her from speaking. It was an erroneous comparison as many German media pointed out: Göring had indeed gotten rid of the chairman by seniority position, but he did not prevent Zetkin from speaking. By then, she was not even a member of parliament anymore. Instead, Göring actually blocked a member of his own group from taking the post.

The incident is an important reminder that parliamentarians will have to remain vigilant and alert during AfD speeches to check facts and react quickly. They did not do so during Baumann’s speech, allowing his half-truth to stand. He will certainly not be alone in pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. According to the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, 15 AfD parliamentarians created a closed Facebook group that has already become a platform for vicious racism and vile hate speech. One member posted a picture of a pizza box with the image of Anne Frank on the cover; the caption, reportedly, read “Oven-fresh, light, and crispy.” Some 50 AfD lawmakers from state and federal levels are part of the closed group, yet when news of its existence came to light, there was no outcry. The lack of outrage has become commonplace.

The AfD’s eerie silence in the Bundestag does not mean other parties can let down their guard. In the coming months, the government will be formed; the committees will take up their work; debates on content will begin – and AfD lawmakers will undoubtedly reveal their true colors. In his speech, Bernd Baumann claimed his party would usher in a “new era in the Bundestag” where mainstream political groups would no longer “decide everything among themselves.” The same holds true for the AfD as well. The public will be watching their words and actions closely.

The post Calm Before the Storm? 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.

The post Unrepresentative Democracy appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.