Germany is about to get a new fitness trainer. So declared Markus Söder, one of the political leaders who have just announced a coalition agreement. In one of the quirks of the country’s constitution, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) will play a significant role in the new administration, and Söder used his moment in the limelight to play the entertainer.
It was a curious way to announce the arrival of a new government, expected to be sworn in during the first week of May. Since the elections of 23 February, Germany will have been in limbo for two and a half months, and all while Donald Trump rampages across the world.
The circumstances could not be more inauspicious. The new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, must deal with an out-of-control United States, Russia taking advantage of the mayhem by feigning interest in a peace deal while making further military inroads in Ukraine, and China increasing influence as anti-US sentiment increases. Domestically, Germany’s economy, already stuttering, faces the 20% US tariffs imposed across the European Union, plus further punitive levies on its all-important auto industry. To compound it all, a few hours before the Christian Democrats (CDU)/CSU and Social Democrats (SPD) took to the stage to seal their deal, an opinion poll put the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the lead for the first time.
All of this will concentrate minds. Germany and Europe can’t afford a repeat of the last coalition, which foundered amid acrimony and under the lacklustre leadership of Olaf Scholz. The stakes were high then; they are stratospherically higher now.
“Germany is getting a government that is capable of action and is strong,” said Merz. “We will govern well together,” he added, as he looked smilingly towards the SPD leader and probable next deputy chancellor and finance minister, Lars Klingbeil. It is an unlikely bromance, but they will have to get on. As both pointed out, the “political centre”, as Germans call mainstream parties, must show it can work. Otherwise the AfD is waiting in the wings for the next election, due by 2029 at the latest.
During the negotiations, which were carried out with little turbulence and few leaks, Merz was accused by party hardliners of giving away too much to the SPD. The result, as set out in the coalition agreement, is a necessary compromise, which as ever leaves all sides feeling they have won some and yielded some.
Merz has secured tougher immigration controls – checks at borders, no family for the first two years, and five years rather than three for citizenship applications. Corporation tax will be reduced. Rules around the minimum income guarantee will be tightened. Klingbeil and his team have preserved increases to the minimum wage and other welfare measures.
All parties were agreed on their approach to Ukraine and Russia. The introduction of a national security council within the chancellery to deal with the many emergencies the country faces is a welcome if belated move. Some form of national military service will be reintroduced, but it is expected to be opt-in, with benefits for participants, rather than compulsory. The climate crisis barely got a mention.
Everyone is talking the talk about modernisation and removing bureaucracy. A new digitisation ministry is designed to kickstart Germany’s lamentable digital provision. Will this analogue and cash-based society finally join the modern world?
As ever in modern Germany, gloom has enveloped the country. Some of it is understandable – a country that craves stability is having to come to terms with a world more on edge than at any time since the formation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Yet much of it is self-indulgent. Having just voted in a general election, with the highest turnout since reunification in 1990, and having ensured a relatively stable two-party coalition (the CSU is not seen as a separate entity), Germans have turned on Merz before he has even been given the seals of office.
His biggest “crime” was to force constitutional changes through the outgoing parliament rather than waiting for the new one to be formed. He knew he had to do this, as the far right and radical left would have voted the changes down. In so doing, he has paved the way for an injection of more spending on defence and an injection of €500bn to tackle the country’s ailing infrastructure.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, he used unprincipled means for principled ends, and he, the SPD and the Greens should be lauded for pushing it through.
Even in these desperately difficult times, and despite its fraught beginnings, this coalition could work. Merz and Klingbeil seem to work well; Boris Pistorius, the popular defence minister, is expected to stay in his job, providing much-needed stability.
Under Scholz, Germany was absent without leave. The EU was rudderless. The economy atrophied. Just over two months after the last government took over, Vladimir Putin had invaded Ukraine, and all the parties’ preparations were torn apart. This time, darkness has descended even before the work has begun. There will be no honeymoon for Merz, no first 100 days. It is hard to imagine an accession as fraught as this one. This will be the last time anyone cracks jokes.
John Kampfner is the author of In Search of Berlin, Blair’s Wars and Why the Germans Do It Better
