In Germany, Stability turns to Uncertainty

With Angela Merkel set to retire in late 2021, the contest for Germany’s chancellorship and subsequent spotlight as head of Europe’s most powerful economy is turning chaotic. For many Germans, Merkel’s fifteen-year tenure has brought steady fiscal growth and an embrace of national consensus-building; for others, she embodies a leftward swing away from her party’s Christian roots and towards an increasingly diverse nation. After confronting the 2008 recession, promoting renewable energy, abolishing conscription, protecting the Hartz-IV social welfare initiative, and opening Germany’s borders to millions of Middle Eastern refugees, Merkel struggles to design an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic in her final full year as Chancellor, all the while attempting to repair the image of her party before the election of a new Bundestag. 

Merkel, the long-term leader of the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), declared in 2018 that she would forego another run for party leadership, instead making way for her political protégé, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Kramp-Karrenbauer struggled to distinguish herself from her mentor, earning the title “Mini-Merkel” and inheriting populist discontent towards the German government’s pro-immigration policy, despite her conservative social views.  Over the course of her tenure, the CDU suffered reduced majorities in several federal states and in the European Parliament. In February 2020, after a branch of the CDU operated against Kramp-Karrenbauer’s directives and cooperated with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Thuringia’s state election, she promised to resign once a different candidate is elected to represent the CDU in the 2021 election.

As three major candidates vie for leadership of the CDU, the possibility of a unified center-right campaign is slowly disintegrating. Former Bundestag parliamentarian and multimillionaire corporate lawyer Friedrich Merz has established himself as the accepted choice to continue the CDU’s socially conservative and economically liberal policies; he leads most opinion polls, and yet meets sustained competition from Armin Laschet, who heads the populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany’s traditionally placid political climate has been disturbed by Merz’s allegations that CDU insiders prefer Laschet and are seeking to postpone the leadership election to disrupt his lead; they cite the COVID-19 pandemic as grounds for delay, despite a constitutional requirement that any leadership vote occur in person. As of December, Merkel has refused to endorse a candidate, maintaining a neutral stance that has characterized much of her tenure as head of government. 

As the CDU crumbles under the weight of choosing a new candidate for chancellor after fifteen years, other parties strive to elevate their voices in the Bundestag. The insurgent AfD, who secured the third-most seats in the 2017 federal election, hope to amass a significant minority that can champion Eurosceptic, anti-immigration policies. The CDU’s partner in an unusual “grand-coalition,” the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), is hemorrhaging voters to the Greens, who now routinely place second in national opinion polling. A potential split of establishment voters between the CDU, SPD, and Greens alarms many Germans, who worry that the AfD’s courting of Christian conservatives threatens German interests in the European Union. Two other parties, the Left and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) hope to collect undecided voters and enter into a governing coalition post-election; talks of a “Jamaica coalition” (a reference to the parties’ traditional colors, black, yellow, and green) emerged momentarily between the CDU, FDP, and Greens after the previous federal election in 2017, and the possibility of a coalition centered around economic liberalism excites many who fear the return of a confusing ideological balance caused by the existing left-right governing partnership.

Regardless, the political stability that marked most of Angela Merkel’s one-and-a-half-decade tenure as chancellor, is gone. Her attention remains fixated on eliminating the COVID-19 pandemic, and Merkel has remained silent regarding the destabilization of a party she resolutely led for years. With a likely election date in September, the CDU has 9 months to unify behind a single candidate and communicate a message concentrated enough to warrant another government, yet broad enough to appeal to Germany’s growing diversities. If either fails, the possibility of no party reaching a majority, and the resulting ideological dance of coalition talks between Germany’s numerous political parties threatens to complicate Merkel’s legacy of steady governance.

Collin McGovern ‘24 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.mcgovern@wustl.edu.