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German election roundup: A ‘wide-open’ race, a scandalous grilling and a Merkel teddy

With less than a week to go until Germany goes to the polls, the conservatives are confident of victory, the SPD are on the defensive, and a German toy manufacture decides to honour Merkel the only way they know how.

Published: 20 September 2021 18:32 CEST
German election roundup: A 'wide-open' race, a scandalous grilling and a Merkel teddy
The Merkel teddy. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Nicolas Armer

A reversal of fortunes?

Over the past week or, so, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder has been saying that the CDU and CSU are about to see their fortunes change. This may have been seemed like wishful thinking at first, but surely enough, in the eleventh hour, the Union has been clawing back a small – but not insignificant – amount of support in the polls.

As of Monday, Armin Laschet’s conservatives were polling at 22 points – around 1.5 points higher than last week. Meanwhile, the SPD were down one point on 25 points, and the Greens were unchanged at 15 points.

The slight turn-up for the books hasn’t just got Söder setting his sights on victory. Armin Laschet, the Union’s chancellor candidate, has also been telling the press how confident he is.

“I am firmly convinced that the Union will win this Bundestag election,” he said on Monday after a meeting with his election team in Berlin. “We are in a race to catch up, and the race is open as never before.”

While the polls have shown the former frontrunners lagging behind the SPD for a number of weeks, Laschet pointed out that around a quarter of voters still hadn’t made up their mind – meaning the race could still be wide open.

“That is why we are fighting to become the strongest political force,” he said.

Scholz gets a grilling, and the SPD are fuming

In the third ‘Triell’ between the three chancellor candidates, more than a third (42 percent) of viewer declared that the Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz had come out as the winner. But the Finance Minister and SPD chancellor candidate continues to be plagued by an ongoing fraud investigation that has been seized upon by the CDU as a sign of his untrustworthiness.

On Monday, Scholz surprised his critics by turning up in person to answer questions posed by the Finance Committee concerning potential oversights in the anti-money laundering unit FIU.

The body, which Scholz’s ministry is indirectly responsible for, is suspected of failing to report potential wrongdoing to the relevant authorities. But, according to AFP sources, Scholz told the committee that no minister could solve all problems “at the click of a finger”. 

READ ALSO: German chancellor candidate Scholz quizzed in fraud probe

While the CDU have been making as much as they can out of the ongoing investigation, those in the SPD camp suspect their motives aren’t entirely pure. Speaking to DPA on Monday, the parliamentary secretary of the SPD parliamentary group, Carsten Schneider, said that the Union was abusing the issue for the election campaign.

“The CDU and CSU are desperately trying to construct new accusations against the federal finance minister and the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, as they no longer have the strength for a substantive debate,” he said.

German toy maker creates Merkel teddy 

She’s been an immensely popular leader for more than a decade and a half – so much so that some have termed it a bit of a personal cult. But clearly, the affection for Angela ‘Mutti’ Merkel is palpable.

For anyone who feels like they may miss having that iconic blonde bob and rhombus-shaped hand gesture in their lives after the elections, one German toy manufacturer has found the solution.


Surrounded by kings, queens and former US presidents, Merkel the bear is in good company. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Nicolas Armer

In honour of her years of political service, the Coburg-based company has created a 40cm-high teddy bear Merkel, complete with cropped hair, a red blazer, a necklace in the colours of the German flag, and – of course – the rhombus.

According to Bavarian radio station BR24, Merkel now ranks among other prominent figures such as Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth, who have also been depicted by the bear-makers.

READ ALSO: The Merkel-Raute: How a hand gesture became a brand

“We try to express contemporary historical moments in teddy bears as an art form,” managing director Martin Hermann told BR24. 

But anyone keen to get a cuddly Merkel should be warned: they don’t come cheap. Picking up a Mutti of your own will cost you around €189, the toy company said – though, of course, the Chancellor herself will be able to get one for free.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

INTERVIEW: ‘Failed climate policies are fuelling far-right politics in Germany’

Alt-right political parties tend to oppose environmental protections, but is there a connection between their political success and climate policy failures? Author and thought-leader Sandrine Dixson-Declève explains why Germany may be having a ‘1930s moment’, and why the next elections are gravely important.

Published: 17 May 2024 15:24 CEST
INTERVIEW: 'Failed climate policies are fuelling far-right politics in Germany'

It’s understood that far-right and populist political parties tend to either downplay the realities of climate change, or block progressive policies that would try to mitigate its impacts. But the link between failed climate policies and the recent rise of populist parties is rarely addressed.

Speaking as a panellist at the Green Tech Festival in Berlin on Thursday, climate policy thought-leader Sandrine Dixson-Declève voiced concern that poor climate and economic policies are fuelling the popularity of far-right politics in Germany and across Europe. 

Co-president of the Club of Rome, Dixson-Declève works to promote policies that she believes would help secure a sustainable future for humanity. Such policies are laid out in the book Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, that she co-authored.

The Local spoke with Sandrine Dixson-Declève about Germany’s climate policy failures, and why she thinks the upcoming European elections are of the utmost importance.

The shortcomings of Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ had serious political consequences

Having been a contributor and advisor to Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition), Dixson-Declève has followed German politics and environmental policy for years.

“I believe that one of the biggest mistakes was that we politicised energy policy in Germany from the outset,” she told The Local, adding, “Merkel actually accepted the big green push to pull out of nuclear, which actually created a big mess.”

Germany’s anti-nuclear energy movement dates back to the 19070s, and led to the foundation of the Green party. Under Merkel’s leadership, a plan was adopted to phase out nuclear power with the last three nuclear power plants taken offline in 2023.

But losing nuclear power as an energy source came with some serious consequences.

“The first big mess was the continued burning of coal,” Dixson-Declève explained. “The second big mess was Nord Stream 2, and that led to the invasion of Ukraine…because it gave Putin power.”

Still, she wouldn’t suggest that Germany try to revive its nuclear power now: “I believe that Germany needs to really think through the next steps.”

READ ALSO: ‘Nuclear power is a dead horse in Germany’: Scholz rejects reopening plants 

Protestors run past riot police

A wave of protestors break through police lines at Lützerath. Open pit coal mining in west Germany destroyed most of the Hambach Forest, as well as dozens of villages such as Lützerath. At both sites massive citizen protests were met with brutal police evictions. Photo by Paul Krantz.

Energy efficiency is the missing piece to Germany’s climate plans

How to build up renewable energy infrastructure is at the centre of most discourse around curbing fossil fuel use, but using the energy we have more efficiently arguably deserves more immediate attention.

“The other missing link, which no one talks about, is energy efficiency,” Dixson-Declève said. “Actually the best energy is the energy you don’t use. That is unsexy, and that is why energy efficiency hasn’t been taken up the way it should have been since 2010.”

While working on climate and energy plans in 2010, she says she came across a study that said Europe could wean itself off of Russian gas just by putting energy efficiency requirements in place for buildings.

In 2022 the European Commission finally began to take this idea seriously when Germany and Europe suddenly needed to replace Russian gas imports, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Another massive energy saver that has been politicised for all the wrong reasons in Germany is heat pumps.

According to Eurostat data, about half of all energy consumed in the EU is used for heating and cooling, and most of that energy comes from fossil fuels. Heat pumps are significantly more efficient than boilers and allow for greater use of renewable energy sources.

But when Economy Minister Robert Habeck led an effort to promote heat pumps by banning new fossil-powered heating systems, conservative and far-right parties jumped on the issue as if it were an attack on personal freedoms. 

“As environmentalists, we need to get better at translating the environmental narrative into something that resonates with people,” said Dixson-Declève. 

READ ALSO: Reader question – How do I install a heat pump in my German property?

A unified coalition government that is serious about climate protections might have better communicated to people that heat pumps would ultimately save them money: “They should have been enabled in a way that truly assisted people in getting the heat that they needed in an affordable way at the right time.”

‘I am very scared we are in a 1930s moment’

Whereas the coalition government has largely failed to communicate to voters how environmental policies will improve their lives and save them money, conservative and far-right parties have done extremely well at hijacking the narrative. 

The European People’s Party (EPP – the EU’s largest conservative party), for example, is particularly adept at using citizens’ economic concerns to block environmental policies.

Having analysed the EPP’s manifestos, Dixson-Declève notes that they acknowledge the need to mitigate climate change, but say that protections cannot cost. 

“I think the EPP has done a very good job both of putting in fear of the greens, [as if] they’re only going to think about green climate policies and not about social policies [whereas] we’re here to think about you.”

Sandrine Dixson-Declève with Earth for All

Sandrine Dixson-Declève holds up a copy of the book ‘Earth for All’ alongside two of the book’s co-authors. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Wolfgang Kumm

Germany’s far-right parties tend to use similar messaging to try and convince voters that they will better improve the lives of citizens than the current coalition parties have. 

READ ALSO: Why are the far-right AfD doing so well in German polls?

Nearly 100 years ago, the National Socialist (Nazi) party succeeded in drumming up major support along similar lines.

Speaking as a panellist at Berlin’s Green Tech Festival, when asked how she thought European politicians were doing on climate issues, Dixson-Declève described them as deer in the headlights, adding, “I am very scared we are in a 1930s moment”.

“I think that in the 1930s we didn’t see Hitler coming, we didn’t read the tea leaves,” she told The Local, adding that in the present moment, “people are suffering. When people suffer, they look to anything, any message that’s going to make them feel like that next leader is going to help them.” 

She also suggests that we can’t count on the youth vote to save us, citing Argentina and Portugal as two places where young voters have actually pushed politics to the right recently.

READ ALSO: A fight for the youth vote: Are German politicians social media savvy enough?

“This is a tipping moment politically, and if we’re not careful, it could explode in our faces,” said Dixson-Declève. “We need to get as many people to vote this year [as possible]. It’s an absolutely fundamental vote, alongside the United States, in order to make sure that we don’t slide to the right across Europe.”

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