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Merkel urges compromise at start of tough coalition talks

Outgoing German chancellor Angela Merkel made an implicit call on politicians to overcome their differences on Sunday, as talks between parties to choose her successor got underway following last week's close election.

Published: 3 October 2021 20:39 CEST
German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a speech on the Day of German Unity
German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a speech during celebrations on the Day of German Unity at the Georg-Friedrich-Händel Halle venue in Halle, eastern Germany on October 3rd, 2021, on the 31st anniversary of German Reunification. Jan Woitas / POOL / AFP

The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and their candidate Olaf Scholz narrowly won last Sunday’s vote on 25.7 percent. Merkel’s conservative CDU-CSU alliance plunged to an all-time low of 24.1 percent, as she prepares to leave the stage after 16 years in power.

While the result leaves the SPD in pole position to form a government, conservative leader Armin Laschet has also vowed to begin coalition talks in a last-ditch effort to keep the ailing CDU-CSU in power.

Speaking in front of party leaders at celebrations in Halle to mark German reunification in 1990, Merkel said the country once again had the opportunity to “shape” its next chapter.

“We can argue over exactly how in the future, but we know that the answer is in our hands, that we have to listen and speak with each other, that we have differences, but above all things in common,” Merkel said, in a clear reference to negotiations at hand.

In the complex calculations for a coalition, the make-up of the next German government essentially hinges on which of the two main parties can persuade the Greens and the liberal FDP to sign up for a partnership.

READ ALSO: German parties meet as coalition haggling begins

The SPD held talks with the FDP, described as “very constructive” by the Social Democrats’ general secretary Lars Klingbeil in a statement afterwards.

His FDP counterpart Volker Wissing said the parties’ “substantive positions on important points differ”, but also stressed that a reforming government needed to be formed to take on Germany’s biggest challenges.

The SPD subsequently had talks with the Greens, while their rivals, the CDU-CSU, also met with the FDP on Sunday evening. They will speak to the Greens on Tuesday.

‘Historic defeat’
The Social Democrats have discovered new momentum since snatching the close election win.

A poll for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday showed that 28 percent of the public would vote SPD if the election were rerun, up two percent from the election itself.

The conservative bloc meanwhile lost three percentage points.

Some 76 percent of respondents said they thought Scholz should be the next German chancellor, with just 13 percent backing Laschet.

Headshots of the SPD's Olaf Scholz (left) and the CDU's Armin Laschet

The SPD’s Olaf Scholz (left) and the CDU’s Armin Laschet pictured in Berlin and Aachen, respectively. Scholz narrowly won last week’s vote, but the conservatives have not given up yet and are also starting coalition talks. (Photos by HANNIBAL HANSCHKE and Ina Fassbender / various sources / AFP)

In an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel on Friday, Scholz said it was “clear from every poll that people don’t want the (CDU-CSU) to be part of the next government.

“The election result is clear. The CDU and CSU have suffered a historic defeat and have been voted out,” he said.

The FDP party is closer politically to the CDU than the SPD, but ahead of the talks, their leader Cristian Lindner put pressure on the conservatives. In an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Lindner called on them to clarify whether they “really” wanted to govern.

But the conservatives are not giving up, with CSU general secretary Markus Blume insisting on Friday that a conservative-led coalition had a chance.

‘Democratic accomplishments’
In what was billed as perhaps her last major speech as chancellor, Merkel on Sunday appealed to her successors to defend democracy amid the scramble to form a government.

“We sometimes take our democratic accomplishments too lightly,” Germany’s long-standing leader said in her speech.

She called on the public to “reject radicalisation”, while referring to a neo-Nazi attack on a synagogue in the city where she was speaking two years earlier.

“Diversity and difference” were not threats to society, Merkel added, as Germany had shown in the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The veteran politician, who lived in the communist east before reunification, was visibly moved as she described her own struggles with prejudice and called for more “respect” for the personal histories of east Germans.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about Germany’s upcoming coalition talks

READ ALSO: ‘We lost’: CDU’s Laschet faces calls to resign over German election disaster

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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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