Due to Friedrich Merz’s political sell-out, the left remains in charge in Germany

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BrusselsReport.eu
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By Derk Jan Eppink, a former Dutch MP and MEP

The German federal elections on 23 February, which opposition leader Friedrich Merz said would mark a break with the Merkel era, have resulted in a coalition government led by Friedrich Merz that will continue Angela Merkel’s policies, albeit without Merkel.

The election results forced him to do so in part, but Merz had already abandoned his key issues before negotiations with the SPD on a new German government had begun. Many CDU/CSU voters feel betrayed. But Merkel praises Merz, her former rival whom she brutally sidelined twenty years ago. She recently told Deutschlandfunk: ‘He has shown that he has einen absoluten Willen zur Macht.’

Last month, the right-wing populist AfD became Germany’s largest party in the polls for the first time. Alice Weidel, AfD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, described the Koalitionsvertrag as a “Kapitulationsurkunde” (surrender document).

A bureaucratic epistle

The coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats is called Verantwortung für Deutschland, a somewhat unimaginative title for a coalition agreement. It is a bureaucratic epistle in which the fifth ‘grand coalition’ between the CDU/CSU and SPD takes shape. Markus Söder, the somewhat comical leader of the Bavarian CSU, called it a ‘potential bestseller’.

Merz will not take office as chancellor immediately, as he is not expected to be elected by the Bundestag until around 7 May. He needs 316 of the 630 votes. The most important ministerial posts have already been decided. In addition to the chancellor, the CDU will get the ministers of Economic Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Education, Health, Transport and Digitalisation and State Modernisation. The SPD will take the deputy chancellor, finance, defence, justice, employment, environment, housing and economic cooperation and development. The CSU got interior affairs, agriculture and research, technology and space. Germany’s ‘mission control’ for space travel is based in Oberpfaffenhofen in Bavaria.

The SPD’s leading hand is visible in Merz’s government programme. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it as a ‘Koalitionsvertrag auf Bewährung’: a coalition agreement on probation. The SPD and CDU/CSU are pretending to love each other because there is no alternative.

Merz ruled out the AfD before the Bundestag elections, with the result that he became hostage to the SPD, which is working closely with the Greens behind the scenes. The Social Democrats – who plummeted from 25.7 to 16.4 per cent in the elections – have to be ‘greener than green’, otherwise the Greens will steal even more voters. The German ‘abgehängten’ (equivalent to the Dutch ‘afgehaakten’) ended up with the AfD.

Merz’s shift to the left is clearly visible in the 1,000 billion euros of debt that Germany is incurring for ‘investments’ in, among other things, defence (500 billion euros) and infrastructure (idem). Money is the political lubricant par excellence, and Merz hoped that this golden gift would force the SPD to moderate its stance. That hardly happened. Economically, Merz is stuck on a left-wing course, and when it comes to the promised stricter immigration policy, the coalition agreement produces a lot of ‘soft law’, which is open to interpretation.

Not a word about nuclear power

Merz’s biggest economic task is to breathe new life into Standort Deutschland. The German economy has been in recession for three years. Its competitiveness is being undermined by high energy prices. Chancellor Merkel implemented the Atomausstieg (nuclear phase-out) in 2011. A disastrous mistake. The best solution is to restart the decommissioned nuclear power plants. But Atomkraft does not appear anywhere in the coalition agreement. Merz is putting all his eggs in the Wasserstoffwirtschaft (hydrogen economy) basket.

It is a desperate grab from the world of fairy tales. The myth of ‘green hydrogen’ to make industry more sustainable was once touted by European Commissioner Frans Timmermans with his Green Deal. Hydrogen is not an energy source that can be pumped out of the ground, but must be produced, using a lot of energy. This energy is obtained from wind turbines, which is why it is called ‘green’. Many hydrogen projects have been announced worldwide, but most have been scrapped because they are too expensive.

The hydrogen philosophy is reminiscent of the formula once propagated by Lenin: Soviet power + electrification = socialism. In today’s terms: planned economy + hydrogen = climate neutrality. The second formula is just as flawed as the first. Germany is launching a Wasserstoffwirtschaftswunder, while Merz called for the reopening of nuclear power plants during the election campaign. He effortlessly switched to the outdated hydrogen philosophy of socialists and greens. The watchword: weiter so.

Built-in escape clauses on migration

Voters expected Merz to score points on migration restrictions. This turned out to be very limited. There may be an end to the mass admission policy. For example, Olaf Scholz’s red-green government flew 37,000 Afghans to Germany for family reunification. That programme has been suspended. Germany wants to increase the ‘willingness to return’ with migration agreements. A safe country that cooperates can then count on more generous visa issuance from Germany. The group of ‘safe countries’ is being expanded to include Algeria, Morocco, India and Tunisia.

Germany ‘consults’ neighbouring countries when deporting undesirable foreigners at the German border. But those neighbouring countries – Germany has nine – do not usually cooperate. The coalition agreement states that migrants will be deported for ‘serious crimes’. But what constitutes a serious crime? They are also eligible for deportation if they exhibit ‘not insignificant criminal behaviour’. What does that mean? The SPD has built in many escape clauses on migration. Deportation is made more difficult by legalisation. Migration policy will be stricter than with the Greens, but based on this coalition agreement, it will not be much stricter in practice.

A contradictory part of the agreement is the goal of ‘Bürokratieabbau’ (bureaucracy reduction), because the ‘green economy’ by its very nature has all the characteristics of a planned economy. The government runs a subsidy-driven economy, and companies do not compete with each other with their best products, but with each other for more subsidies. When those subsidies are then withdrawn due to excessive costs, activity automatically collapses; see the subsidisation of electric cars. There is no basis for market forces.

Repressive tolerance

The new government wants to reduce bureaucracy by 25 per cent. That is the Abbauziel (reduction target). There will even be Bürokratieabbaugesetze (bureaucracy reduction laws). However, anyone who reads the coalition agreement will see that the German government is actually going to do more and interfere in everything. Such as the public debate.

Criticism from the opposition is inevitable, which is normal. Merz senses trouble; only a third of citizens trust him. The SPD hates critics anyway, as the outgoing Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, a former Antifa activist, has already made clear. The coalition agreement contains a striking phrase: ‘The dissemination of false assumptions is not covered by freedom of expression.’ Disinformation will therefore be tackled ‘stringently.’ Faeser recently took a step in this direction by having a citizen convicted for posting a meme about her on social media.

Among the comrades of the SPD, Faeser can be counted among the ‘nors links’ (nors left). Unfortunately, humour and German politicians do not mix well. However, it is a sign of things to come. Germany is embarking on the path of repressive tolerance.

 

Originally published in Dutch by Wynia’s Week

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