John Kampfner is a British author, broadcaster and commentator. His latest book “In Search of Berlin” is published by Atlantic. He is a regular POLITICO columnist.
Germany is good at doing things slowly.
Six months ago, the country’s last government collapsed, as small-time politicians with big egos could no longer abide each other. Since then, we saw Germany hold a general election, U.S. President Donald Trump come to power and the world plunged into mayhem. In Berlin, however, things have carried on pretty much as normal.
The outgoing cabinet continued to run the place in its usual fashion, competently but with little sense of purpose. The economy stuttered on. And political parties did what political parties do — connive against each other.
But finally, a new administration is set to launch today. So, will things now change?
According to Friedrich Merz, the Federal Republic’s 10th chancellor, his first 100 days in office will be like no other. Germany, he said, will be turbocharged into activity. And from within the ranks of his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), which was not necessarily brimming with talent, he has been able to produce some surprising yet sensible ministerial choices.
His minister for economic affairs, former energy chief executive Katherina Reiche, isn’t even in parliament, but she might know a thing or two about getting things to work. His Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul has been strong on Ukraine and seems a popular choice around the world. Plus, the Ministry of Defense is staying with Boris Pistorius who, during the fractious years of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, was among the few to understand Germany’s need for proper armed forces.
Interestingly, Merz’s entire worldview — and pitch to voters — turned on its head in the middle of his election campaign. While he was all about austerity at the start, Merz is now determined to spend his way out of Germany’s malaise. And while he gave the initial impression he might emulate some of Trump’s flourishes, that these two conservative private-sector “bros” would get on just fine, now he’s all about preserving liberal democracy from authoritarians.
The remarkable turnaround was the result of U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s infamous speech at the Munich Security Conference — the first time Europe clocked that not only was the U.S. no longer its protector, but it might even be an adversary.
However, Merz’s critics — and in his long and turbulent political life, there have been many — say his U-turns were deliberate deceit, and that he had no intention of sticking to the old spending rules in the first place. For instance, the Greens, who opposed the “debt brake” rule that heavily restricted borrowing, have every right to feel double-crossed, as they’re no longer in government.
On the other hand, the CDU’s coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), are acting as if they won the February election, even though they suffered their most ignominious result in over a century.
The coalition negotiations took less than two months, which in German terms is supersonic. During that time, in his desire to ensure harmony, Merz gave the party much of what it wanted: Seven cabinet posts is considerably more than the SPD was due, and the commitment to continued high welfare suggests structural reform will be minimal.
But much will depend on Merz’s relationship with “new-kid-on-the-block” Lars Klingbeil. The SPD co-leader is the new vice chancellor and minister of finance, and both he and Merz have taken note from their predecessors: Scholz’s government collapsed because the man in charge of the finance ministry, Christian Lindner, acted as an in-house opposition. They will seek to avoid that fate.
Meanwhile, one area where Merz will undoubtedly shine is abroad. This won’t be too hard, seeing as the charisma-free Scholz somehow managed to antagonize many of his interlocutors — even those he should have been close to, like French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. With visits to Paris, Warsaw and Brussels scheduled in quick succession, followed by one to London, Merz has pledged to restore Germany’s role as a major player on the European and world stage.
It will be instructive to see how Merz’s somewhat acerbic nature copes with the many crises Germany and the Western world will face. For example, just how candid will he be with Trump when dealing with Ukraine and Russia? He’s already said he’ll reverse the Scholz government’s approach and dispatch Taurus cruise missiles to help Ukraine, which is bound to cause friction.
But the key question is how this government will spend its windfall — an extra-budgetary vehicle of €500 billion to overhaul moribund infrastructure and spend on the military, all to be paid somewhere down the line.
This extra cash will likely enable Germany to bounce out of recession, but as one diplomat put it to me: “Growth today, modernization tomorrow.” Even though the country’s struggling carmakers may swiftly reconfigure some plants to build military hardware — which is desperately needed — overall, Germany’s still struggling to embrace digital technology. A new ministry has been created with this exact function, but how much it can break through old bureaucratic practices will be the litmus test.
After all, this isn’t the first government that’s vowed to drag Germany into the 21st century.
Then, there’s the far right to contend with. Merz avowedly insists he’s not a populist, yet we can see the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s influence everywhere. The new configuration of the lower house parliament, the Bundestag, has an alarmingly large bank of seats for the party, and latest opinion polls put it neck-and-neck with the CDU.
Unsurprisingly, this is alarming many — but it’s still extremely early in the political cycle. Early measures on immigration, starting with enhanced border controls, will be designed to show the government is tough. The SPD will go along with them too, mindful that the AfD has already decimated its vote.
This is the start of a new era that just might put a spring in Germany’s step — though that isn’t the sentiment among the “Berlin bubble,” where politicians, journalists and think tanks seem determined to write this government off before it’s even begun. Instead, much talk is of democracy’s “last chance” before the next general elections in 2029, where the AfD could emerge as the largest party.
But pessimism and self-denigration are the German national sport. And though the Trump experience has taught us to never say never, Merz will be determined to prove his compatriots wrong.
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