© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Four months of wrangling over a new government coalition have left Germany’s political establishment badly bruised. Chancellor Angela Merkel has lost much of her authority; for the leader of the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz, it’s been even worse. When coalition negotiations finally began on January 26, the SPD’s ratings in the polls sank to 19 percent, a new record low.

Yet as the deeply divided party struggles to make the best out of several more years as junior partner to Merkel’s conservatives, a new leadership hope has emerged. Andrea Nahles, 47, the leader of the Social Democrats in the Bundestag, looks likely to take over from Schulz sooner rather than later. The next step for this feisty, outspoken career politician could then be a run for chancellor.

In many ways, Nahles is the anti-Merkel. Angela Merkel, daughter of a protestant pastor in Brandenburg, had a career as a physicist in East Germany. Andrea Nahles, a devout Catholic, grew up in the rural Eifel region in the very west of West Germany, studied literature, and spent her entire professional life in politics.

Merkel has said many times that she could never have imagined the fall of the Berlin Wall and a life in the Federal Republic. In contrast, any portrait of Nahles is certain to mention her school yearbook, where at the age of 19 Nahles described her ambitions in life as “house wife or federal chancellor.” As one recent observer wryly mentioned, she has missed out on the first.

Where Merkel, as a latecomer to politics, has always kept a certain distance from her own party, Nahles has spent her entire adult life in the SPD. Just like Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD politician to make it into the chancellery, Nahles built her career in the Jusos (Young Socialists). The SPD’s youth organisation is known as a fierce training ground for any aspiring leader, calling for strategic finesse and ruthlessness as well as networking skills.

In general, the Jusos are more leftist than the SPD, and Nahles, their national leader from 1995 to 1999, used to be highly vocal about social injustice and the need for a wealth tax. Her outspokenness – sometimes earthy, sometimes vulgar, but always loud—earned her praise from then-SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine, who called her “God’s gift to the SPD.” The wider public, however, didn’t like her much. Ever since, Nahles has been hampered by a reputation for being shrill—a handicap she will have to overcome if she really wants to be chancellor one day.

A Strategic Mind

There is no doubt that she has a brilliant strategic mind. In the early 2000s, Nahles was one of the first Social Democrat leaders to recognize how dangerous the new Left Party would become to the SPD. As a member of the top leadership of her party, she vehemently opposed Chancellor Schröder’s social and labor market reforms, and drew up a radical reform plan for health care insurance.

As the years went by and Nahles became first secretary general and then deputy leader of the SPD, she slowly moved toward the political center. From 2013 to 2017 she served as federal minister of labor and social affairs, a hugely difficult portfolio. Her conservative colleagues in Merkel’s cabinet didn’t particularly like her politics—introducing a minimum wage and allowing workers to retire after 45 years on the job – but they came to respect her effectiveness in managing a large public administration. At the same time, Nahles retained her gift for simple and direct language.

Yet her name never came up last year when the SPD was casting around for a candidate to challenge Merkel in the September elections. Instead, Martin Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament, became the Social Democrats’ surprise candidate for chancellor.

Schulz’ start was hugely successful, but all too soon disillusionment set in, leaving the Social Democrats with only 20.5 percent of the vote on September 24, their worst result in over 70 years. Schulz managed to hold on to his post as party leader, but was unable to claim the one office where he could be certain of high visibility over the coming years: party leadership in the Bundestag. It was Nahles who won the post.

Ever since the elections, Schulz has been struggling. Having initially declared that his party would not take part in any new government, he was forced to reverse himself when talks between Merkel’s conservatives, the Greens, and the liberals broke down. This proved very difficult to sell to the SPD’s grass roots, who believe that another four years as junior partner to Merkel will seal the party’s downfall.

No wonder the SPD’s party congress on January 22 was nervously awaited by its leadership. It seemed not at all certain that delegates would support the decision to enter formal coalition talks with Merkel. Much was expected of Schulz’ one-hour speech: This was his great chance to rouse and convince the party base. Failure, he knew, would be laid squarely at his door.

But Schulz was suffering from a bad cold, and his speech was lackluster. It was Andreas Nahles who saved the day, galvanizing the delegates in just six-and-a-half minutes. “I am a member of this party because I want to see great things achieved,” she shouted in a hoarse voice. She wasn’t afraid of new elections, she added, she was afraid of the questions voters would ask if the SPD had to campaign for the very same things that they could have implemented in government. “People are going to say that we’re bananas!”

In the end, 56 percent of delegates approved the coalition talks. Almost single-handedly, Nahles had given Merkel a chance at forming a new government, saved Martin Schulz from having to resign as party leader, and positioned herself as a possible successor. It took six-and-a-half minutes—and the skill of a lifetime in politics.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

More than 100 days after September’s general election in Germany, Sunday marked the start of Chancellor Merkel’s second attempt to form a new government and secure a fourth term.

Framing the long-delayed talks, she warned in her New Year’s address of a “growing rift” in Germany, between those who see their country as strong and successful and those with concerns of being swamped by immigrants or excluded from society.

“These are the two realities of our country … and both of them motivate me,” she said.

It was a well-timed observation: despite steady economic performance and a record low jobless rate, a representative survey in the national daily Welt found just a third of Germans (36 percent) were optimistic about the future, down from 51 percent in 2014.

The German leader said a priority for her fourth term – if she secured one, of course – would be to rebalance the social market economy, Germany’s postwar model of tying economic success to social cohesion. How she plans to do this looms large over coalition talks in a supposed news blackout. No leaks, no interviews, no tweets. Those were the rules.

The blackout lasted 24 hours while the talks – and German federal politicians’ full pay go-slow – roll on.

If all goes well, the unprecedented interregnum is not likely to end until Easter. Merkel is angling an encore of her last coalition between her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the more right-wing Christian Social Union (CSU) from Bavaria, and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). They have spent the last four years governing together, but they are deeply wary of each other after voters in September dealt them all their worst results since 1949.

This week’s talks – or, more accurately, talks about talks – are about seeing whether they can find a common basis for formal negotiations in the weeks ahead. After looking like losers on election night, each party is battling to emerge the winner. But not everyone can win and, for the risk-averse German leader, these are tortuous times.

On election night, after a drubbing from voters, a grim-faced SPD leader Martin Schulz vowed to rebuild his party in the opposition. When Merkel’s coalition talks with two other parties collapsed, however, he yielded to party demands for open-ended negotiations. The SPD will have the last word as the party rank-and-file will vote on any agreement to form a coalition government, so Merkel knows she will need to offer substantial concessions to the SPD. They want greater spending on welfare and infrastructure as well as reform of the two-tier health system.

“In education, health, and old-age care and much more, we are not a modern land,” said Schulz ahead of talks.

But SPD plans to loosen Germany’s fiscal belt – financed by taxes on top earners – are unpopular with the rising CDU conservative camp and their beloved balanced budget. They were also spooked by the 12.6 percent scored by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), on foot of security fears linked to the refugee crisis. For that reason, CDU right-wingers see security as the only justification for additional spending.

Pressure on All Sides

The CSU also saw disastrous results in September. Meanwhile, the party has closely watched the rise of conservative Sebastian Kurz in neighboring Austria, who sparked controversy after building a coalition government with the Austrian far-right FPÖ. The Bavarian conservatives have copied many of Kurz’s winning policies, and at their annual new year conference, they began flying political kites: tighter immigration controls and expedited deportations of criminal refugees.

That tone has aggravated the SPD, but the center-left knows not to push back too hard against the predominant law-and-order mood, particularly because some voters believe the government lost control of its security in the 2015-16 refugee crisis.

A tougher nut to crack will be Europe. As former European Parliament president, Martin Schulz has made clear he backs French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for reforming the EU, pushing deeper European integration with a eurozone finance minister and budget.

Foreign minister and ex-SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel flouted the interview ban to underline the importance of Macron’s reforms for his party.

“It is time Germany answered this,” he told German television, noting his party had a clear position on pushing forward with European integration. “We think it is right to invest more in the EU – in research, development, and education … The CDU/CSU has been quite reserved to date.”

The limited CDU/CSU enthusiasm stems from concerns that some of these reforms will be seen as a burden on German taxpayers. Since the euro crisis, pretty much every EU proposal is now framed here as a burden on the German taxpayer.

In the coming days, expect to see the SPD press its advantage as Merkel’s last option before the unappealing thought of fresh elections. But also expect spirited resistance from the Bavarian CSU. The party is facing a crucial state election in September, and it can no longer risk appearing soft on immigration to its conservative voters.

This takes us to the greatest question mark: whether the latest coalition talks in Berlin will ever lead to a new government. After nearly 16 weeks, we still don’t know, nor do German voters. According to a poll on Sunday, one in three voters think the current round of talks will fail. And only a narrow majority – 54 percent – think a third grand coalition would be good for Germany. Ambivalence, thy name is Angela.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

When Sigmar Gabriel spoke at the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, his audience could be forgiven for having a sense of déjà vu. His call for a more assertive European Union has become almost a tradition, an annual call for renewed foreign policy engagement from Germany and the EU. With the decades-old assumption that the US would play the role of protector “crumbling”, Germany’s foreign minister said the EU – and Berlin in particular – needed to adopt a more energetic role in the world.

“We have to see that either we try to shape this world ourselves, or we will be shaped by the rest of the world,” he said. I have asked a few Berlin officials why Gabriel had flagged, but not explained, what he thinks Germany’s more energetic role in the world should be. Their explanation: with Germany still waiting for a new government after September’s elections, it was no surprise that Gabriel stopped short of being more concrete.

That is this year’s excuse, I thought. What will it be next year?

Perhaps my journalist’s ear is not attuned to the fine diplomatic messages hidden in Gabriel’s speech. Or perhaps, after years of listening to similar speeches about Germany – leading from behind, from the middle, wherever – I’ve finally lost patience. Does Germany do foreign policy, I wonder, or does Germany do foreign policy policy?

In my time in Berlin, I have covered my share of German politicians calling for things to be done in the world. Challenge them on why Germany doesn’t do them, or at least contribute more, and often you get an emotional response listing what Berlin is doing. It is often far less than their own ambitious demands of others, but we clearly should be grateful Germany is doing anything at all.

Gabriel urged his Berlin audience – as in previous years – to “describe our own positions and, if necessary, make clear where the limits of our solidarity lie.” As he is the foreign minister, I expected him to do just that: show and tell where Germany’s solidarity limits lie, and why. I’m still waiting.

A Tired Fortune Teller

Instead, sounding like a tired fortune teller, Germany’s chief diplomat predicted that, after Trump, the EU’s relationship with the US would never be the same again. “Germany can no longer simply react to US policy, but must establish its own position,” he said. All that was lacking: Germany’s position.

In a barely-concealed dig at acting leader Angela Merkel, Gabriel said Berlin had to do more to “invest in its own strength and in the unity and strength of the EU.” In particular, he described as “barely tolerable” an EU narrative dominant in Berlin since the eurocrisis that highlights the EU’s cost over its benefits for Germany. “In truth, we are net winners,” he said. “Yes, we pay more taxes to Brussels than we get in subsidies, but in truth our economy only wins through the European area.”

So where, I wonder, are Gabriel and other German politicians when the Bild tabloid or populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) wheel out their by now weekly attacks on the EU? Bild and the AfD have embraced the post-eurocrisis narrative of the bloc as a plot against poor German taxpayers. This is poisoning Germany’s European debate and severely curtailing any political wriggle room in Berlin, but no politician has stepped in directly to slap down the tabloid or the populists. Why bother – Sunday sermons are just fine, aren’t they?

10-0 for France

Wrapping up, Germany’s chief diplomat heaped praise on the election of French President Emmanuel Macron, author of radical euro reform proposals, as a “stroke of luck of historical dimensions.” By comparison, Germany in the Merkel era had played a “delaying, blocking or even eccentric position” in the EU of late.

“Things stand 10-0 to France, but it shouldn’t remain that way,” he added a week later. Instead of owning up to the SPD’s contribution to this yawning gap – ruling for all but four years since 1998 – Gabriel had not even one idea in his speech to even up the score.

Perhaps we should be grateful. Like many Germany politicians, when Gabriel does present ideas for Europe he rarely explains how they could and should be implemented. For years as economic minister, for instance, Gabriel argued that the eurozone’s “Stability and Growth Pact” was lopsided, with too much focus on stability and fiscal concerns. He made an interesting call for the euro to be equipped with an added social dimension to temper the pursuit of balanced budgets with social cohesion concerns. It was an interesting idea, but lacked a concrete “how” – and, after being recycled a few times, vanished from view.

Last week it was the turn of Gabriel’s successor as Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz. In a speech to party delegates heavy on pathos but tellingly light on detail, Schulz called for a United States of Europe by 2025. Great, Martin: how? Announcing is not the same as presenting a road map or, heaven forbid, delivering.

Europe is waiting for a new German government to finally get to work. But with this bunch in Berlin, it will be a long time before this country gets down to the real work of spelling out what it is prepared to do – or sacrifice – to help stabilize an increasingly uncertain world.

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© REUTERS TV/Handout

When movie director Alfred Hitchcock was asked for his recipe for suspense, he said that a good film should start with an earthquake and be followed by rising tension. After sacrificing 97 non-refundable minutes of my life to watch the so-called “Chancellor Duel” on Sunday evening, I can reveal the secret to German pre-election political debate: start with agreement and slowly increase the agreement.

Back in the day, a duel involved a difference of opinion: two revolvers and someone bleeding to death at dawn. Even if none of this is available today – though reality television is catching up all the time – the least you can expect in a “duel” is some dispute.

This doesn’t mean the wall-to-wall insults of the US debate season. But is dispute such a dirty word? Are creative sparks too much to expect in an election that, in another flagrant misnomer, is called a “Wahlkampf” – an election battle? I have had greater battles getting a knife through warm butter.

The problem is that, after eight years as grand coalition partners since 2005, Germany’s two big parties are incapable of duels, disagreements, or battles. Instead, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democrat (SPD) challenger Martin Schulz specialize in sticky, stifling consensus. That was the lesson from their one and only encounter across four television stations and many more radio stations.

Struggling to close a 14-point gap with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) ahead of the September 24 poll, this was Schulz’s first and last attempt to score a few points against the German leader. And he blew it. Afraid of coming across as aggressive – Germans don’t like aggressive, particularly not a man against a woman – Schulz followed the advice of an expensive adviser and smiled his way through the evening.

For all that smiling, he never got to any criticism, polite or not. And there is enough to criticize, starting with the argument that Merkel is too fixated on being popular in the present to prepare Germany for the future.

Of course, voters don’t reward anyone for the future, and the public mood in the present is hugely self-satisfied. Germany’s economy is purring nicely at 1.6 percent growth, and the 4 percent jobless rate is a post-unification low. Everything is fine in Germany, particularly when you look at the chaos elsewhere.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

But traveling Germany for the campaign, I’m struck by how many people mention the same concern to me: what goes up must come down, particularly if your economy is one quarter based on an industry – cars – that has been exposed as conning its customers on a global scale.

Even without the emissions fraud meltdown, Germany’s car companies are in danger of missing e-mobility turn-off. If that happens, 800,000 jobs are at risk, and Germany’s economy – and Europe with it – will hit the wall.

Then there’s demographics: by mid-century, half of Germany’s population will be older than 51. A little belt-tightening might be worth talking about at election time. But given the huge influence of older voters, the country’s doomed pension system remains untouched.

There is also much to debate concerning Merkel’s Energiewende, announced after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which requires Germany to go nuclear-free by 2021. Her renewables gamble could yet succeed, but if it fails Germany’s industrial backbone is in peril.

Risks are also mounting in the so-called digital transition, as German industry struggles with a telecommunications infrastructure slower than Albania’s. A stronger euro in the coming years, meanwhile, will make expensive German products less competitive on world markets. There’s a two-tier health system, missed climate targets, a housing crisis in major cities, and a huge tax burden.

In short, the future risks for the German economic engine are everywhere, and that’s before we factor in risks from Brexit and US protectionism.

Softly-Softly

These issues were barely mentioned on Sunday night, and while Schulz criticized Merkel’s softly-softly political style as lacking vision and leadership, he rarely hammered home his point with more examples.

He got close to where he should be by poking holes in Merkel’s unilateral refugee approach, which let neighboring European countries off the hook. He also forced her on the defensive over Turkey by saying he would demand an end to EU accession talks amid Turkey’s slide toward autocracy and the jailing of 14 German citizens.

Yet even then Merkel insisted – with a straight face – she was not going to engage in “tough talking … just because we are in an election.” Well – if not now, when?

The German leader said she was “shocked” by Germany’s car industry diesel manipulation, but gave no idea here the industry should be in ten years. Nor did she explain where she believes the EU should be after Brexit. On Donald Trump, Merkel declined to say if she thought the United States still played a leadership role in the world. Instead she promised to push the US to come around to the need for a “sensible” diplomatic solution with North Korea.

In the midst of all this, Schulz could have taken a step back and pointed out Merkel’s political trick: she forever floats somewhere between the present continuous and the near future. It’s neither here nor there. But he didn’t, and when Merkel described herself as representing “a party of centrist moderation … working for sustainable solutions,” Schulz had nowhere to go.

Without kicking up a fuss, or smashing any porcelain as he goes, the SPD leader wants to be a centrist chancellor of Germany. But that vacancy is taken.

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© REUTERS/Eric Vidal

An audible sigh of relief emerged from Berlin when Emmanuel Macron triumphed in France’s presidential elections, overcoming right-wing populist Marine Le Pen and her Front National. Germany’s two main parties, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) led by Martin Schulz, made no secret of their support for Macron and his unabashedly pro-EU stance. From the beginning, Macron vowed to reform his country and to deepen its ties with Germany in particular, eliciting the much-quoted retort from Le Pen: “France will be led by a woman: either me or Ms. Merkel.”

Both the CDU and the SPD are looking to Macron as the European Union’s new hope, reviving the Franco-German tandem, particularly as the EU continues to face various crises: Brexit, populism, the rising threat of terror, refugees, migration, as well as increasing friction among the member states, which had led the EU to the brink of collapse. In Berlin a great deal of hope has been placed on the political newcomer, and for good reason: Macron’s victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections could be the last chance to stabilize and restore the EU’s legitimacy. If his presidency fails, it cannot be ruled out that anti-European and anti-German forces will surge to power in France in five years’ time. Regardless of which party wins the German election in September, it is in Berlin’s own interest that Macron’s presidency will be a success.

It remains to be seen whether the couple franco-allemand will finally be Europe’s integration engine again. In Germany, most signs point to a victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel in September’s elections, but even were Martin Schulz to pull off a dramatic upset, both candidates are strong champions of the European project and closer ties with France.

Still, in some areas, cooperation could be easier said than done.

The Future of the EU

The debate about the EU’s future is playing out against different backdrops on both sides of the Rhine. In France some 40 percent of the electorate chose anti-EU candidates in the first round of voting on the far left and far right of the spectrum. In fact, Macron emerged as the only unequivocally pro-EU candidate in the running.

In Germany, meanwhile, commitment to the EU is part of the political mainstream. Even if the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has successfully thrust euroskeptic views into the spotlight, those have not reached the center of political or public discourse. Consequently, Berlin still enjoys greater room for maneuver in European affairs.

Still, crises have battered and destabilized the European Union, and both Germany and France are well aware that the argument for an ever closer union is starting to ring hollow. Macron is therefore championing a differentiated approach to integration – an approach that grants member states willing to integrate deeper more scope to push ahead, particularly in the eurozone and within the realm of Common Security and Defense Policy, but also in energy and digital policies. In these areas, Berlin and Paris are in step.

But Macron is also in favor of a smaller core circle of member states led by the two countries that would function as an avant-garde. Merkel’s government is hesitant to support such an idea, conscious of the criticism that Germany has grown too powerful in Europe. Berlin has sought to protect the interests of less powerful EU countries that are suspicious of a stronger German-French duo.

Neither the CDU nor the SPD has taken up one of Macron’s campaign proposals to establish conventions in each member state in order to enhance the EU’s democratic legitimacy. Since all member states’ governments would need to get behind this idea, it is likely to fall flat.

The Eurozone and Europe’s Economy

The eurozone and economic integration have always been among the points of real friction between Germany and France. The two governments have wrangled over economic policies often in recent years.

Macron’s views on European economic policy took form during his time as economy minister under François Hollande. Today Macron is pushing to overhaul the ailing French economy by reforming the labor market and welfare regulations and consolidating the budget, thereby restoring France’s credibility on the European stage. In Germany, his approach has been well received across party lines.

But Macron’s ambitions do not stop at France’s borders: He is bidding to reshape European policy as well, finding ways to deepen integration and cultivate greater solidarity among member states. He has advocated for a European economics and finance minister for the eurozone, complete with their own budget to finance mutual investment projects, help member states in need, and offer backing in crisis situations.

Such proposals have met with positive response from Schulz and the SPD: They have thrown their support behind Macron’s bid for common European investment projects, and are calling for binding minimum wages across the EU. Chancellor Merkel’s conservatives, meanwhile, have distanced themselves from such initiatives thus far, although Merkel has not ruled them out entirely.

Moreover, the new French president welcomes global free trade but has urged Europe to extend anti-dumping regulations, sharpen laws on foreign investment, and integrate environmental and social standards into the EU’s trade agreements. Macron has also called for a Buy European Act that would ensure that public tenders are only awarded to companies that produce at least half their goods in the EU.

Protectionism does not serve Germany well; it has profited from global trade more than any other European country. That is why Germany’s main parties have largely rejected linking environmental and social standards to any trade agreements. After all, such demands could deal a blow to Germany’s powerful export industry.

Common Defense and Security

There is far more common ground on common defense and security policy (CSDP). Even before the vote, Germany’s Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and her French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian (now Macron’s foreign minister) released a joint policy paper on expanding the EU’s CSDP.

The policy paper links this deepening cooperation to PESCO, short for Permanent Structured Cooperation, an article in the Lisbon Treaty allowing a core group of member states to integrate security and defense policy without dividing the European Union. The defense ministers also called for a permanent EU headquarters for civilian and military defense and security operations, closer cooperation on logistics, and coordinated training. A revised Athena mechanism for financing common EU military costs would provide a framework for funding CSDP initiatives. The SPD has already signalled its approval of many of these proposals.

Macron aims not to build a European army, but rather to better coordinate member states’ existing resources and create a path toward a European defense union. The French-German partnership stands at the core of that policy. Merkel and Schulz are well aware that common defense and security would grant France a platform to appear bold and strong, on equal footing with Germany (and thus make Germany look less dominant).

France suffered a series of major terror attacks in 2015-16 that reshaped its security and counterterrorism policy. Like his predecessor, Macron sees military missions abroad as a key element of counterterrorism and has vowed to carry forward the military’s current engagements along with its partners. That is why Paris is likely to demand more military engagement from Berlin. In Germany, however, opposition toward military missions abroad remains significant.

Merkel and Macron believe military cooperation with the US is still a core element of European defense. Schulz, however, has positioned himself as the anti-Trump, and would seek to untangle defense and security cooperation with Washington. While Merkel and Macron have pledged to ramp up defense spending and meet the two percent GDP target for NATO members, Schulz has argued he will not bow to Trump’s ambitious weapons aims.

The Refugee Debate and Schengen

The refugee crisis of 2015 tested ties between Germany and France: Paris and Berlin strove for common solutions but were driven apart by their different interests. Asylum policy will remain a core issue that will require them to work together constructively – especially because the EU has yet to come up with a sustainable solution to the influx of refugees and migrants.

Macron has advocated defensive measures and called for a reform of the Dublin asylum system. He has proposed the fast-tracking of asylum and deportation procedures and checkpoints in the refugees’ countries of origin and transit areas.

His proposals are in line with Chancellor Merkel’s strategy. The German leader has launched a campaign to strike deals with countries of origin and transit countries, like Turkey and Afghanistan, in order to stem the flow of migration. Macron has pledged more development aid as well to help create opportunities there and battle smuggling operations – proposals welcomed by both the CDU and the SPD.

Although Macron was the only candidate to praise Germany’s refugee policy during the presidential campaign in France, he has not indicated that his government would be willing to take in more asylum seekers. Instead, he is seeking a fair distribution of refugees across Europe and sanctions levied against member states that refuse to honor their obligation.

More “solidarity” in the fair distribution of refugees and migrants has also been championed by Schulz. He has avoided speaking of sanctions but has indicated that he would try to link refugee policy with the distribution of funding for agriculture and infrastructure. Merkel, on the other hand, has positioned herself against any initiatives to punish uncooperative member states with fines.

Macron has also argued for the need to strengthen the EU’s external borders; he has suggested making Frontex more robust, adding 5,000 new positions and additional resources and responsibilities. Both the CDU and the SPD have made the securing of external borders a focus as well. At the same time, Macron has made clear he stands behind the Schengen agreement, championing the free movement of people. This does not prevent him from striving to reform the guidelines for foreign (“posted”) workers, though.

Europe in Paris

The new French president is a crucial partner for Germany in the attempt to reform the European Union. He is the most EU- and Germany-friendly leader France has seen in years, if not in history. On the campaign trail and now in office, he has strived to both show French voters the benefits of European integration and make Paris a powerful player in Brussels. The strengthening of the Franco-German tandem is at the core of this: His cabinet includes several policymakers with close ties to Germany, like Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire (see our Close-Up of him in this issue), and Philippe Etienne, ambassador to Germany 2015-17, who now serves as one of the president’s top foreign policy advisers.

Both Merkel and Schulz have already emphasized that they are ready to work closely with the French president. “Mercron” has the potential for advances in the defense and security field and with regard to migration policy, whereas eurozone reform and implementing a “social Europe” would be easier with “Schucron.”

However, the next German chancellor and the French president are likely to face major structural hurdles in further strengthening Paris-Berlin ties. Many French voters are still skeptical of an overly powerful EU – and of Germany, the most dominant member, in particular. Macron’s proposals for eurozone reforms are highly unpopular among Germans who are wary of carrying the financial burden while other member states continue to pile up debt.

Paris and Berlin will need to strike clear agreements to show their own citizens the will to compromise goes both ways – the first steps in deepening trust and cooperation for the path forward.

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© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Sitting in a windowless, wood-paneled hall in Berlin’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) headquarters, the newest leader of Germany’s oldest political party has great plans for September.

Half a dozen times in his 50 minute meeting with the foreign press, Martin Schulz lets his dream job title – Chancellor Martin Schulz – escape his lips. German voters go to the polls in September and, bespectacled eyes on the prize, the bearded 61-year-old is using a meeting with the foreign press to outline plans for Germany and Europe that are as grand as his plans for himself.

Though they lack detail now, he has six months to fill in the blanks. And what Schulz lacks in detail he makes up in self-belief, the secret sauce of political power and election victories, the ingredient Germany’s SPD ran out of in 2005. Limping along since then – twice as junior grand coalition partner, once in opposition – the SPD has been a sorry sight. But no more: Schulz, parachuted in from the European Parliament, where he last served as president, is here to turn things around.

And with his party now breathing down the neck of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in polls, Germany’s political juices are flowing once again.

After twelve years of alternativlos – alternative-less – Merkelian leadership, Schulz is presenting himself as a Merkel alternative with an anti-Trump, yet clearly Trumpian, twist: he is positioning himself as a man running for the forgotten people “who keep the lights on” in Germany. The economy is booming, but the SPD leader wants to tweak the social reforms of recent years to make Germany “fair” again.

While his team works on a political program, Schulz has already flagged two promises that will have consequences far beyond Germany’s borders. First: a plan to prioritize social spending over defense spending.

In a clear snub to US president Donald Trump, who has attacked European NATO members’ defense under-spending as freeloading, Schulz disputed the terms of Germany’s commitment to boost spending to two percent of economic output. At their Cardiff meeting in 2014, NATO leaders signed off on an “aim to move towards the 2 percent guideline within a decade.” But Schulz argues that this “aim” is secondary to the SPD’s twin traditions of social spending and disarmament.

Spending 2 percent of economic output on defense, amounting to “€20 billion or more in the coming years” would, he said, bring a “considerable financial burden” to Germany. “This is certainly not the goal my government would follow,” he said. “What we need is not rearmament but a disarmament spiral, and much more investment in prevention.”

Instead of spending money on a new arms race, he said Germany would be better off investing in its creaking infrastructure, its schools and its welfare system. All have taken a hit in the last years to balance the federal budget and shoulder crisis costs, but SPD strategists sense the mood has shifted – in Germany and in Europe.

Second, on EU policy, the ex-European Parliament president insists he wouldn’t “play the game where everything good is national and everything bad is from Brussels.” Instead, SPD analysis shows there are many voters – particularly younger supporters – shaken by Brexit and Trump’s election and open to the idea of EU politics with a greater emphasis on solidarity.

“A focus not just on stability, but also growth stimulation is necessary in all member states,” he said.

The Same Coin

The mantra of the SPD leader: growth and stability are two sides of the same coin, and neither can be ignored. But EU high-austerity policies of the last years need to be complemented with a new social component.

It’s an argument Schulz inherited from his predecessor as party leader, Sigmar Gabriel. What the SPD has lacked to date, though, is a concrete blueprint for how it plans to deliver this new brand of social politics. In Germany, that would mean challenging the “debt sinner” narrative used during the crisis by Merkel and allies to justify social spending cuts, while sparing banks, in exchange for bailout loans.

If Schulz has a grand strategy on this front, he’s not telling us yet. Instead, he told foreign journalists somewhat cryptically that, with allies struggling everywhere except Germany, social democracy would only survive if it adapted and followed the advice of ex-SPD leader Willy Brandt: “Every era needs its own specific answers.”

Specific answers are also in short supply when it comes to Schulz’s favored coalition partners. His desire to keep his options open has allowed the CDU to claim that a vote for the Schulz SPD is a vote for the Left Party, the successors to East Germany’s communists. Asked if fears over such a taboo-breaking alliance cost the SPD votes in a recent state poll in Saarland, and might do so again in September, Schulz says: “No, I don’t.”

Promising change but so far keeping it vague has given the SPD the kiss of life. And say what you want about Martin Schulz: the man hoping to oust Angela Merkel is not short of confidence. And that, as they say in Germany, is half the job.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

When Germany’s former foreign minister Joschka Fischer departed the political stage in 2005, he had nothing but scorn for his heirs. Fischer, a man with a notoriously strong sense of self, proclaimed himself the last of the live rock-and-roll generation in politics. “After me,” he said, “it’s all playback.”

His vainglorious valedictory remark came back to me last week as I watched Germany’s leaders go through the motions on Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent is when politicians here are supposed to loosen Germany’s stiff political corset and, for an hour or two, give their opponents a humorous roasting.

That is the tradition, at least. Once, a politician joked about a rival so unpopular that, if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying in protest.

Such lowbrow humor is a distant memory today. As an Anglo-Saxon observer, political Ash Wednesday, indeed the entire pre-Lenten carnival season in Germany, reminds me of why outsiders call this country the land that jokes forgot.

Public humor is a dangerous business here, my German friends tell me, because humor is a very regional matter. If that’s the case, too many German regions are starving in terms of humor.

If Germany is part of the problem, the other part is the times we live in. Today, every word a politician utters can be retweeted instantly, stripped of its context and deconstructed by someone, somewhere, who is permanently poised to be upset on their own or someone else’s behalf. Why, politicians say, take that chance?

Then there’s the drinking. Political Ash Wednesday is a final excuse in Germany for pre-Lenten excess, disguised as a democratic gathering. Yet an outrageous number of politicians were on non-alcoholic drinks this year. Which leaves me with two questions: If you take the drink out of the tradition, what’s left? And in the brittle, buttoned-up world of German politics, am I seriously expected to get through to September’s federal elections sober?

Over the Moon

Of course Martin Schulz fans would argue that you don’t need drink to be inebriated and elated. The Social Democrats’ (SPD) rank and file is over the moon at how the former European Parliament president has shaken up German politics – and his party – by entering the election race.

One month and an eight-point opinion poll leap later, Schulz and his SPD have their best chance in twelve years of ousting Angela Merkel.

In the SPD’s Bavarian tent last week, drinkers cheered the core Schulz campaign promise: more fairness for the ordinary people who “keep the lights on” in Germany. Though still light on detail, he is promising careful corrections to the 2005 SPD social and economic reforms that, depending who you ask, either saved Germany or destroyed the SPD. (It may have done both.)

In the sober Merkel era, the Schulz euphoria is striking – and infectious. After years in the doldrums, the SPD’s relief at having a winner candidate is clear. But six months before polling day is very early to be peaking, and who’s to say the Schulz intoxication won’t lead to a murderous hangover?

At present, Schulz is a projection screen for the disparate, incompatible wishes of the SPD’s competing camps and electoral cleavages; he will eventually have to disappoint someone. Over in the tent of the Left Party, party co-leader Katja Kipping poked her finger in that very wound. Schulz’s reforms sounded “great,” she said, but could yet prove to be a mere “dash of powder on the same old neo-liberal face.”

Down the road, the Bavarian conservative CSU pulled in one thousand fewer drinkers than the SPD, despite being on home territory. For CSU leader Horst Seehofer, Ash Wednesday was about a quick bit of DIY papering over deep cracks on refugee policy with Chancellor Merkel.

And so it fell to Merkel, in her home constituency in the northeast, to deliver a fiery broadside against the Schulz challenge. She mocked the SPD’s self-analysis over the Agenda 2010 reforms, suggesting the Social Democrats were “always looking in the rear-view (mirror), never able to say they’re happy about something they achieved.”

“That’s why we as Christian Democrats say that we take care of the future, and others should preoccupy themselves with the past,” she shouted.

Under pressure in the polls over refugee and security matters, Merkel’s address was not just about tackling the Schulz challenge. It was about silencing doubts in her own party that she could switch from her preferred chancellor-manager mode back to election fighter. Job done, Merkel did something neither the CSU leader nor the SPD hopeful – a former alcoholic – did. While Schulz and Seehofer faked it with fizzy apple juice in traditional krugs, Merkel enjoyed a well-earned beer to soothe her hoarse voice.

And with that the German chancellor proved that – after twelve years as chancellor – she is no political playback singer. If she can learn to crack a few good jokes, who knows: In September, Angela Merkel might even have the last laugh.

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© Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

What had seemed certain is suddenly thrown wide open. For the first time since 2006, the SPD has pulled ahead of the Christian Democrats in the polls, threatening Angela Merkel’s reign. Recent poll figures indicate that the Social Democrats have risen to some 30 percent – success the party leadership could not have dreamed of at the time of the switch from the deeply unpopular Sigmar Gabriel to the great unknown that is Martin Schulz.

Headlines like “Schulz is breathing down Merkel’s neck” are setting Social Democratic hearts aflutter. At the SPD-led ministries in Berlin, euphoria has taken hold as the Social Democrats rediscover their own audacity of hope, hope that has been absent since Gerhard Schröder was voted out of office in 2005. Internet memes, Facebook pages, and the whole paraphernalia of modern electioneering have sprung up overnight. It is becoming conceivable that “Mutti” Merkel, the seemingly eternal chancellor, could actually be beaten.

Meanwhile, Schulz – a stocky, bearded man with unfashionable glasses – has turned into an SPD superhero. Never mind that he is the unlikeliest candidate for such teen idol-like worship, and that he arrived in their midst largely unknown: He has cobbled together the most picture-perfect Social Democrat life story. That is something the party – suffering from an abundance of functionaries and policy wonks indistinguishable from those of their competitors – had not been able to come up with for years.

Small-town Boy Made Good

The special appeal of Martin Schulz lies in part in his background. He is a remnant of the SPD of yore, when former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former party chairman Franz Müntefering represented the Social Democrats. They were men who had risen up from the working class, who had to struggle for success and stood for the street credibility of Social Democrats. When they talked about beer, football, and low wages, their voting public felt understood. The model of a politician shaped by post-war hardship had been lost for years.

But Martin Schulz has brought it back – at a time when, paradoxically enough, the traditional working-class voter has all but disappeared in Germany. Opinion polls show that he is attracting the young vote as well as previous non-voters in particular, and quite a few from Germany’s smaller parties. The poll numbers for the Greens and The Left Party have weakened recently, as has support for Germany’s right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

He was born in the small town of Würselen, nestled deep in the west, where Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands meet. His father was a policeman, and money was tight at home. In his teenage years, the young Martin set out to derail his life spectacularly, neglecting school and concentrating on a career as a football player. Though he had some early success, Schulz fell apart when an injury ended his prospects. He left high school without any higher qualification and started drinking. “For some years, I drank everything I could get hold of,” Schulz admitted in an interview with the magazine Bunte three years ago.

And that is part of his special attraction: He has never tried to hide the struggles he endured in his childhood, nor has he concealed his lack of a university education. Instead, he shifts the focus to his comeback story and his iron will. Schulz admits he was even ready to end his life at the age of 24. But friends in his hometown steered him into bookselling; he finished an apprenticeship and took over one of the local bookstores.

At the same time, he became more active in the local SPD youth organization. In 1987 he was elected mayor of Würselen, a post he held for ten years. In 1994 he also became a member of the European Parliament, at that point a rather unattractive political career. There began the meteoric rise of Martin Schulz: From member of the board of Germany’s SPD to leader of the parliamentary group in the European Parliament, president of the EP between 2012 and 2017, and now candidate for German chancellor.

Few have entered this race with less experience at the domestic front. Schulz has led a town of 40,000 people and headed the EP. So why don’t voters seem to be all that bothered by this lack of political know-how? Part of the answer lies in his very public persona fighting for the future of Europe.

The Model European

In his last speech in the European Parliament in December 2016, Martin Schulz spoke of “humility” in thanking lawmakers there for their cooperation. It was an unusual sentiment coming from a man whose time in office was defined by a healthy dose of self-confidence, frank statements, and plenty of personal presence on the stage. “My aim in office is to make the European Parliament more visible and for it to be heard,” Schulz had said when taking office in 2012. It is fair to say that he almost single-handedly put the European Parliament on the map in Europe, and himself with it (or maybe it was vice versa). His work for the greater good of Europe earned him the 2015 Charlemagne Prize, the highest honor the EU has to award.

His main assets are his fearlessness before power and his gift for straight talk. When attacked by right-wing populists, Martin Schulz fought fire with fire. Back in 2003 he needled Silvio Berlusconi so much that the populist Italian prime minister said he would recommend him for the role of “kapo” in a movie about the Nazi concentration camps. During his farewell appearance Schulz shot out at Nigel Farage, foremost enemy of the EU and its institutions: “Your attacks are the pride of each European democrat.”

Schulz refused to mince his words, whether in a meeting with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan or in an interview after Donald Trump’s inauguration, describing the new US president’s “Muslim ban” and refusal to accept refugees as “outrageous and dangerous.” He even forced European heads of government to accept his presence at the start of their otherwise top-secret council meetings.

Behind the scenes, he was a master at pulling strings and wrangling deals. EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, his competitor in the last European elections, became Schulz’s close friend and political partner; the two even helped form a grand coalition of European Christian Democrats and Social Democrats that functioned seamlessly. There were complaints that the two parties were far too close, but they delivered results and governed smoothly.

Next Stop German Chancellor?

Schulz is undoubtedly a seasoned politician with deep international experience. What he lacks, however, is the intimate knowledge of domestic politics that one would expect for Germany’s top job. In his first public appearances, he has steered the ship of his party markedly to the left, putting social justice at the core of his campaign.

He has already talked about rolling back some parts of the Agenda 2010, the SPD-led reforms that overhauled Germany’s labor market and, some believe, triggered years of steady growth and success. That puts him at direct loggerheads with Angela Merkel, while electrifying the more left-leaning SPD base.

Schulz has a personal talent for campaigning, and Germany is set for a heated battle over the next few months. He will have no trouble mobilizing voters in marketplaces and at sausage stalls across the country. He is still the scrappy fighter today that he was forty years ago on the football pitch, and voters seem find him credible and relatable.

But will Martin Schulz actually have what it takes to beat Angela Merkel? She is not only considered the queen of Europe, but post-Trump she has even been billed the new defender of liberal democracy. The chancellor has the standing, the respect, and the unparalleled experience in Europe and on the international stage – and that might just make her irreplaceable. Merkel is the safest possible pair of hands in very stormy times.

For many Germans, it would be a leap of faith to turn their back on the trusted chancellor and opt for the unproven newcomer, but Merkel has also been facing her greatest battle in her eleven years in office, particularly with the refugee crisis. It is early days yet, and six months are a long time in politics. Developments in the United States, among others, will determine whether the German public will really be in the mood for change come September.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Germany’s mercurial Sigmar Gabriel has always been good for a surprise. But the political earthquake he triggered on Tuesday, announcing his resignation as Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader, was the best yet.

Gabriel, the burly party chairman since 2009, said he was throwing in the towel to back ex-European Parliament president Martin Schulz as his successor. This being an election year, that makes Schulz the de facto challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in the September federal poll.

The announcement by Gabriel, a 57-year-old political veteran and economy minister in the Merkel government, caught even close allies by surprise. They knew an announcement was coming in the next days, but Gabriel tore up his own timetable with the painfully self-critical comment that he viewed himself as more of a liability than an asset to his party.

“If I ran then I would fail and, with me, the SPD,” he said. “The party has to believe in its candidate and gather behind them.”

After mulling his future for six months, Gabriel’s last act was to commission a private poll of SPD members. The result: the 61-year-old Schulz was by far their preference to try and hinder a fourth Merkel term.

Gabriel, in comparison, has long been viewed as an unpredictable figure, as unpopular inside his party as among the wider public. Just 19 percent of voters backed him to challenge Merkel in a public television poll last month, compared to 36 percent for Schulz.

Gabriel isn’t disappearing: he wants to switch from economics to foreign affairs, succeeding Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who will become Germany’s president in the next few weeks. That raises fresh questions about German diplomacy at a delicate time – given tensions with Russia and Donald Trump’s United States – between now and September.

“Bull in a China Shop”

“He’s not a born diplomat, more a bull in a china shop,” said Daniel Friedrich Sturm, a Gabriel biographer. “He’ll push a different style but, with the rise of Trump and the right-wing populism in Europe, everything is being mixed up anyway. It’ll be interesting to see how things develop.”

A protégé of ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Gabriel failed to resolve tensions between the SPD’s leftist and centrist wings and provide resolution to the party’s lingering ambiguous relationship to the Schröder-era economic and social reforms.

An added challenge in the second grand coalition under Merkel: voters’ refusal of voters to reward him for delivering on core campaign promises such as a minimum wage. “Because the numbers didn’t go up, he decided the person most likely to win should run,” said Johannes Kahrs, a leading centrist SPD figure.

The task of reviving – and uniting – the SPD now falls to Schulz, who grew up in a mining family in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and has had several stations in his life: bookseller, alcoholic, local mayor, and, since 1994, a member of the European parliament. For the last five years, he was EU Parliament president, boosting the profile of the institution like none of his predecessors.

But apart from being a dyed-in-the-wool European, lifelong Social Democrat, and permanent German talk show guest, nobody knows much about how he will position himself in a domestic political scene in which, until now, he was always an outside observer.

“He has to position himself – on social policy, security policy, all domestic policy – on an ad hoc basis, and in just eight months,” said Volker Kronenburg, a professor for political science at the University of Bonn.

Aware that he has a lot to do in the coming months, Schulz will not, as previously speculated, join Merkel’s cabinet. Rather, he will concentrate on the campaign and the party, which is flat-lining at historic lows of around 20 percent in polls, around 13 points behind Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Back to the Roots?

In his first remarks, Schulz promised a back-to-the-roots campaign, taking on Merkel, populism, and growing social divisions with classic social democratic politics of social justice. “The SPD has a claim on this theme,” he told party MPs on Wednesday, who greeted him with a standing ovation, hopeful the new arrival can restart the party and reboot its political fortunes after years adrift.

“Many people are turning away from Merkel and are asking what the SPD has on offer,” said deputy leader Manuela Schwesig. “Martin Schulz stands for the European idea and solidarity. I think he can reach people’s hearts because he stands for a new start and has a high level of credibility.”

The biggest question thrown up by Gabriel’s departure and Schulz’s arrival is whether the surprise move makes Merkel’s life more difficult as she seeks re-election next September – and, if so, how.

After three terms, including two grand coalitions with the SPD, no one in her government relishes the thought of a return of the current setup. But there may be no other realistic option, given slumping support for the mainstream parties and the complicated arithmetic resulting from the likely arrival of two more parties in the next Bundestag – the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the returning Liberal Democrats (FDP).

Schulz is the fifth SPD leader to face Merkel in her time at the helm of the CDU and, while he is unlikely to overtake the CDU in polls, he could prove a wild card in Germany’s election campaign.

“He’s never had government power and very little domestic political experience,” said Jürgen Falter, professor for political science at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. “But he is more of a fighter with the common touch, so Angela Merkel will have to take him seriously as a campaigner.

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