Merkel's Critics Step Up Saying She Sold Out Plum Posts to SPD
Merkel's Critics Step Up Saying She Sold Out Plum Posts to SPD
(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s critics accused her of selling out to the Social Democrats to stay in office, giving a foretaste of party back-biting during her prospective fourth term.
Economic conservatives in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union were among the first to blast the draft coalition pact, which hands the Finance Ministry to the Social Democrats for the first time in eight years. Others suggested the CDU had missed a chance to rejuvenate its leadership.
“Chancellor at any price -- Merkel gifts the government to the SPD,” headlined Bild, Germany’s most-read daily newspaper. Europe’s biggest economy is getting “a coalition of big egos” whose lust for power will increase public cynicism about politicians, Bild said in an editorial on Thursday.
While the criticism comes from parts of the CDU that often differ with Merkel, there’s no immediate sign of an open revolt against the chancellor, who’s now within reach of matching Helmut Kohl’s 16 years in power. The political risk for Merkel is that her concessions to the SPD will embolden more critics to come out into the open.
‘Political Mistake’
“The cabinet setup as of now is a political mistake,” CDU lawmaker Christian von Stetten said on ARD television. “Giving up the finance ministry won’t exactly cause a roar of enthusiasm among CDU members.”
Hamburg mayor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, has been tapped as finance minister, according to German media reports. He would follow eight years of Wolfgang Schaeuble, the CDU icon of fiscal austerity during Europe’s debt crisis, a prospect that Merkel’s critics view as a threat.
Policy pledges in the draft coalition pact move Europe “further along the path into a transfer union where German savers are liable for the debt of other countries,” Wolfgang Steiger, head of the CDU’s Business Council, said on the group’s website. “The distribution of cabinet posts in no way reflects the election result.”
Merkel, 63, has governed with a junior partner for all of her 12 years in power. What’s different this time is that her CDU-led bloc fell to its lowest support since 1949 in the federal election in September. The SPD also plunged to a post-World War II low, leaving the two biggest parties weakened and Germany’s left and right fringes strengthened.
Scholz, 59, is no stranger to Merkel. He served as labor minister from 2007 to 2009, in her first “grand coalition” with the SPD, and found himself defending the government’s cuts in social programs against attacks by the SPD’s left wing.
That put him in the camp of Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, Merkel’s predecessor as chancellor, who clashed with his party 15 years ago over labor-market and welfare changes he pushed through to fight record unemployment at the time.
As finance minister, Scholz would be Germany’s point man in the euro area. He’ll be under pressure to stand up for a government that’s often been the European Union’s fiscal watchdog, despite his party’s advocacy of looser reins on spending.
‘Not Worried’
Merkel told reporters on Wednesday it isn’t decisive which party runs which ministry.
“You can only spend the money you have,” she said. “Honestly, I’m not worried at all.”
--With assistance from Patrick Donahue Arne Delfs and Birgit Jennen
To contact the reporter on this story: Rainer Buergin in Berlin at rbuergin1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka, Chris Reiter
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