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Merkel, the eternal Chancellor now past her zenith

Angela Merkel has survived multiple crises but her obstacle-strewn path to a fourth term has prompted suggestions she is past her peak, leaving Germans to ponder life without the veteran chancellor.

Published: 7 February 2018 13:32 CET

Merkel, the eternal Chancellor now past her zenith

Photo: DPA

After 12 years at the helm of Europe's biggest economy, the leader who is often called the world's most powerful woman is facing a battle for her political survival – and all she can do is wait.

Her hope of forming a new government now lies with some 460,000 rank-and-file members of the centre-left Social Democrats, who will vote on whether to approve a hard-fought coalition deal hammered out with her conservative bloc.

Organising the postal ballot is slated to take around three weeks, prolonging the uncertainty that has dogged Germany and drained Merkel's influence since September's inconclusive general election.

Merkel's CDU/CSU alliance won those polls but scored its worst result since 1949, while the far-right made huge inroads capitalising on anger over her open-door refugee policy.

With Merkel locked in the longest period of coalition-building in Germany's postwar history, talk of “the erosion” of her power has dominated the headlines.

Even if the SPD hands the 63-year-old another stint as chancellor, commentators are predicting she will not serve a full four-year term, fuelling speculation about potential successors.

“Angela Merkel is past her zenith,” political analyst Oskar Niedermayer told the financial daily Handelsblatt last month.

If the SPD torpedoes her plans, Merkel faces the prospect of snap elections or heading an unstable minority government – anathema to the famously cautious and cerebral leader.

Polls suggest Germans are split down the middle on Merkel, with 51 percent saying they want her to stay on as chancellor.

Although her time in power is “obviously nearing its end”, Germans appear torn between “Merkel fatigue” and fear of change, Der Spiegel weekly wrote.

'Leader of free world'

Merkel may be down, but few are counting her out just yet.

During her long rule, the pastor's daughter raised behind the Iron Curtain has been derided as Europe's “austerity queen”, cheered as a saviour by refugees and hailed as the new “leader of the free world”.

In the turbulent times of US President Trump's rise to power, Brexit and multiple global crises, she was long seen as the bedrock in a country concerned with maintaining its enviable growth and employment rates.

Germans have thanked her by keeping her in power ever since she became their youngest and first female chancellor in 2005.

“Mutti” (Mummy) Merkel, with her pragmatic, modest and reassuringly bland style, seemed to have perfected the art of staying in power in a wealthy, ageing nation that tends to favour continuity over change.

Seemingly devoid of vanity and indifferent to the trappings of power, she lives in a Berlin flat with her media-shy scientist husband Joachim Sauer, shops in a local supermarket and spends holidays hiking in the Alps.

Though frequently criticised for sitting out tough challenges, Merkel has punctuated her reign with bold decisions – from scrapping nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, to opening German borders to more than a million asylum seekers since 2015.

'Merkelvellian'

Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in 1954 in the northern port city of Hamburg.

Weeks later her father, a leftist Lutheran clergyman, moved the family to a small town in the communist East at a time when most people were headed the other way.

Biographers say life in a police state taught Merkel to hide her true thoughts behind a poker face.

Like most students, she joined the state's socialist youth movement but rejected an offer to inform for the Stasi secret police while also staying clear of risky pro-democracy activism.

A top student, she excelled in Russian, which would later help her keep up the dialogue with President Vladimir Putin. He was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

During that momentous upheaval, Merkel joined the nascent Democratic Awakening group. It later merged with the Christian Democrats (CDU) of then-chancellor Helmut Kohl, who fondly if patronisingly dubbed Merkel his “girl”.

Merkel's mentor was not the last politician to underestimate her and pay the price.

When Kohl became embroiled in a campaign finance scandal in 1999, Merkel openly urged her party to drop the self-declared “old warhorse”.

The move, which has been described as “Merkelvellian”, sparked her meteoric rise.

Before September's election she was seen as likely to exceed the 16-year reign of Kohl – but given her current struggles to build a new government, all bets are off.

Tax cuts and military service: How the CDU wants to change Germany

It may be more than a year until the next round of federal elections in Germany, but as spring turns into summer, the political campaigning is already heating up.

In the latest polls at the end of April, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) parties were still riding high at over 30 percent.

In the upcoming EU elections in June and federal elections next year, the conservatives are hoping to translate these poll numbers into significant wins. If the trend continues, they could once more take the reins of Europe’s largest economy, heading up the chancellory and acting as the largest governing party after a four-year hiatus.

At their party conference in Berlin this week, CDU leader Friedrich Merz said he hoped to win votes by appealing to swing voters and become “the people’s party of the centre”. But the new party programme agreed on by conference delegates has been widely seen as a lurch to the right.

The new 50-page Grundsatzprogramm, which sets out the party’s core principles, marks the first time this document has been rewritten since 2007, when Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany and leader of the CDU.

It’s a distinct break away from the 120-page programme set out in the Merkel years, with a strong emphasis on tough asylum rules and identity politics, as well as incentives to work longer hours and later in life.

Here are some of the key policies to know about.

Integration, religion and Leitkultur

At the centre of the Union’s new party programme is the concept of Leitkultur, or dominant culture, which stands in opposition to multiculturalism and demands that migrants accept German values and way of life.

According to the CDU, Leitkultur means “a shared awareness of home and belonging”, an “understanding of our traditions and customs” and knowledge of German culture and language, as well as a commitment to the German constitution. Immigrants should accept these things “without ifs or buts”, the programme states.

German Grundgesetz

Two copies of the German Grundgesetz, or Basic Law, lie on a table in a library. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Frank Molter

In terms of religion, the CDU believes that people of the Jewish faith belong in Germany, but only some muslims do. “Muslims who share our values are part of Germany’s religious diversity and our society,” the party writes. But: “An Islam that does not share our values and rejects our liberal society does not belong in Germany.”

Looking at Germany itself, the party believes in a “cosmopolitan patriotism” that protects the country’s rich history and traditions while acknowledging historic guilt.

Citizenship and language

In line with its emphasis on Leitkultur, the CDU wants all future applicants for German citizenship to formally acknowledge Israel’s right to existence.

Under the party’s plans, all children in Germany would face a compulsory and standardised language test at the age of four to check their ability to communicate in Germany. Children who are struggling would undergo a mandatory year of school preparation in a local Kita.

Compulsory military service

Having originally floated the idea in very soft terms, the CDU emerged from its party conference with a new policy to bring back compulsory military services in stages.

At first, the party wants to introduce a contingent conscription where conscripts to the military are only called up as and when they are needed. This would culminate in the reintroduction of a compulsory year of service after school, in which young people would either undergo military service or volunteer in the social sector.

This would help plug deficiencies in the Bundeswehr (German army) and manage the growing threat posed by Russia, the party emphasised.

Tax breaks for middle classes

Attempting to woo the “working middle”, the CDU has aired plans to raise the threshold for the top income tax bracket of 42 percent, which currently stands at around €63,000.

In addition, the party wants to offer tax breaks for people who take on extra hours at work. Those in full-time employment who work more than their contracted hours won’t be taxed on their overtime.

Other tax breaks would include relief on social contributions for people in lower tax brackets, and an “attractive” corporation tax to encourage economic growth.

CDU party conference

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, Ursula von der Leyen and Bavarian state premier and CSU leader Markus Söder at the CDU party conference in Berlin. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Michael Kappeler

No end to debt break

As a “promise to future generations”, the CDU says it will encourage sustainable politics that give future governments financial “room to manoeuvre”, in spite of the challenges posed by an aging population.

“This is only possible with solid finances and a clear commitment to the debt brake,” the party states. In other words, the party will continue to cap borrowing at a meagre 0.35 percent of GDP.

Return to nuclear energy

In the aftermath of the energy crisis, the CDU says it wants to ensure that the energy supply remains secure, clean and affordable – which means the return of nuclear power. “Germany can’t currently do without nuclear power plants,” the party writes.

According to the conservatives, renewable energy sources should be expanded while also using fossil fuels – with an emphasis on gas rather than coal.

When it comes to fighting climate change, the CDU is pinning its hopes on the free-market economy, using financial incentives and new technologies to attempt to steer things in the right direction.

Pensions and social welfare

The CDU says it is committed to securing pensions over the long-term by topping up contributions through capital investments – and the party also wants the system to be fair to hard workers.

“Those who have worked and paid contributions should receive more than someone who hasn’t,” the programme states.

Pensioners sit on a bench in Dresden

Pensioners sit on a bench in Dresden. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Sebastian Kahnert

Though there is no mention of raising the pension age, there is no mention of capping it, either, but the party seems to be counting partly on incentives to encourage people to stay in work. If employees decide to stay on at their job past pension age, they should pay less tax on their earnings.

On the welfare side, the CDU states that work should pay and those who neither work nor study should be at a distinct financial disadvantage.

Family and identity

True to its conservative and Christian roots, the new programme emphasises that marriage and family should be the core unit in German society. However, the concept of “family” has been broadened out to include same-sex marriages, single parents and so-called patchwork families.

“Family is where parents support children and children support parents in the long term,” the CDU explains.

That said, the CDU isn’t quite so liberal when it comes to gendered language and gender identity: the party is against using “forced” gender-inclusive language on public broadcasters and maintains that biological sex is an “unchangeable fact”.

Rwanda-style asylum plans

In a sea change from the era of Angela Merkel, the CDU wants to significantly toughen up laws for refugees to make Germany a less attractive place for people to claim asylum.

The party’s new programme sets out plans for a scheme similar to the United Kingdom’s controversial Rwanda policy, which would see asylum seekers transported to a third country while their applications were being processed and remaining in this country if their applications were successful.

A proposal to grant recognised asylum seekers the right to stay in Germany did not receive a majority at the party conference.

However, given the fact that the UK’s Rwanda policy has been dogged by legal issues – not least the claims that it contravenes international law – it is unclear if this policy could ever be enacted.

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