Whoever Follows Merkel Must Find a Way to Contain the Far-Right
Whoever Follows Merkel Must Find a Way to Contain the Far-Right
(Bloomberg) -- If politics is about timing, then Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s departure might have been the most astute move of her brief stint as leader of Germany’s ruling party.
Beset by party indiscipline, historic low poll scores and abysmal personal approval ratings, Kramp-Karrenbauer had been on the ropes for months, her chances of running as Angela Merkel’s successor in the next election - let alone winning - appearing more distant by the day.
A bare 14 months after her installation as head of the Christian Democratic Union, Kramp-Karrenbauer’s decision to quit, announced Monday morning, stunned her party colleagues and throws the race to assume the chancellery up in the air.
Yet the upheaval may still prove less destabilizing than a prolonged period of uncertainty just as Europe’s largest economy faces headwinds from a slump in global trade, Brexit and the ongoing fallout of the coronavirus. And Merkel declared that she plans to insert herself directly into the process, underscoring how little trust she has left in her former protege but also meaning the scope for political shocks is limited -- at least for now.
Merkel will continue working on policy initiatives agreed with her Social Democrat coalition partners despite the turmoil in her party, according to Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose SPD is also seeking a chancellor candidate.
“The grand coalition will do its job, that is our duty,” Scholz said in an interview with ARD TV late Monday, adding that final agreement on a basic pension is key for the SPD.
For historians, Merkel looks set to serve out her fourth term and overtake the German record in office set by her mentor-turned-critic, Helmut Kohl. But in doing so she’ll bequeath a dilemma that plagues politicians in Berlin and each of the country’s 16 states for years to come: how to respond to the rise of the anti-immigrant, nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
Unanswered Question
Kramp-Karrenbauer, known as AKK, paid the price for a rogue regional party chapter that disobeyed her and aligned with the far-right in an eastern state assembly. Her decision to accept responsibility for the episode won her some plaudits for taking a firm stance against the AfD and for acting decisively to try and draw a line under the scandal in Thuringia.
The move buys her party valuable time to find an alternative candidate to fight elections due in the fall of 2021. But it also leaves unanswered the fundamental question of how to maintain the cordon sanitaire around the AfD at a time when the CDU-led bloc and its traditional Social Democratic rival are leeching support, including to the far right.
“Now everyone in the CDU leadership is called on to enforce the shutting out of every kind of collaboration” with the AfD, Ruprecht Polenz, a senior CDU lawmaker in the federal parliament, said on Twitter.
The front-runners to replace AKK as CDU leader reflect the internal tensions Polenz hints at. Armin Laschet, the state leader of industrial North Rhine-Westphalia, is a centrist in the Merkel mold, while Health Minister Jens Spahn and Merkel antagonist Friedrich Merz have the backing of the party’s conservative base and hence may be more suited to winning back voters lost to the AfD.
Their respective approaches to healing the rifts with regional CDU members in eastern Germany where the AfD is strongest -- stick or carrot -- would help determine the future direction of the party of Konrad Adenauer.
So far, no contender has officially stepped forward, biding their time while the process takes shape. Spahn on Tuesday appeared to try to tone down his image as a standard bearer of the party’s right wing.
“A powerful center is more important than ever,” Spahn said in a Twitter post. “Determination, cohesion and clarity make us strong.”
For Brussels, the immediate concern is one of paralysis in Berlin. Merkel will be reluctant to make strategic decisions at European Union level that bind her party until a successor is decided, according to one EU official. Another said that while Merkel has the freedom to make decisions, the window of opportunity for big steps will only come after the next French presidential election in 2022. Both asked not to named discussing domestic politics in a member state.
Distracted Berlin
“The search for a successor itself will absorb all political energy” in Berlin, said Guntram Wolff, director at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank. “To make real progress, Berlin will need clear majorities and political vision, which won’t be available” during the transition period.
AKK fell victim to an electoral predicament witnessed across Europe as traditional parties lose support to populist and nationalist movements, forcing the formation of untested coalitions in countries from Italy to the Netherlands.
In Germany, the issue erupted in Thuringia after the AfD surge to place second in October elections, leaving no obvious coalition without its participation. A similar dynamic was witnessed after the last German elections in 2017, when the AfD’s rise prompted Merkel to attempt an unprecedented federal coalition with the Greens and the smaller Free Democratic Party. The FDP scuppered those efforts and so she opted for her third “grand coalition” with the SPD.
In France, Emmanuel Macron responded to the hollowing out of the center by creating his own political movement. In Austria, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz entered an alliance with the far-right Freedom Party, only for it to collapse amid scandal and for him to return at the head of a coalition with the Greens.
Polls suggest that could be a model for Germany, perhaps even with the Greens fielding the chancellor.
The Thuringia episode doesn’t help the CDU at a time when it’s polling at historic lows. But neither do surveys suggest any boost for the AfD, whose support has peaked at about 15%. The SPD and FDP are flat lining.
If there’s a winner from the turmoil in Thuringia it’s Germany’s Greens; untainted by the scandal, they look more electable by the day. Consistently polling in second place, they could soon be as strong as the CDU, Henrik Enderlein, president of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, said on Twitter.
For Holger Schmieding and Florian Hense, economists at Berenberg Bank, a big shift in policy even after 2021 is unlikely since a CDU-led government would have to forge a platform on the basis of a coalition agreement -- in all probability with the Greens.
The upheaval over AKK shows that the political landscape is struggling to adapt to the prospect of life without Merkel, said Enderlein. Until the election, he added, “expect German politics to be inward-looking.”
--With assistance from Nikos Chrysoloras, Iain Rogers and Patrick Donahue.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Crawford in Berlin at acrawford6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter, Flavia Krause-Jackson
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