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POLITICS

Merkel’s partners reach key five percent support

The struggling Free Democratic Party obtained the key five percent of national support for the first time since August of last year, according to a poll released Sunday. This could put the junior coalition partner back in the political game.

Published: 29 April 2012 10:01 CEST
Merkel's partners reach key five percent support
Photo: DPA

The Emnid poll, commissioned weekly by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, showed the FDP gaining one point over last week’s survey and reaching five percent – the hurdle needed by parties to get parliamentary representation.

The poll, from the respected opinion research institute, is good news for the FDP as it comes just one week before key state elections in Schleswig Holstein and two weeks before similar elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Under German law, parties who do not obtain a minimum of five percent of the vote are not allowed to send representatives to parliament.

The poll also showed a one-point gain for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, with the CDU reaching 35 percent this week. Rumours have been flying that Merkel was preparing to ditch the FDP as governing partners if they fail to clear the five percent hurdle at the state elections.

Both the Social Democratic Party and the Pirate party lost one point, with the SPD now at 26 percent and the Pirates at 11 percent. The Greens and the Left party stayed the same as the previous week, with 13 percent and seven percent respectively. Other parties accumulated a total of three percent.

DAPD/The Local/mw

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POLITICS

‘Dexit’ would cost Germany ‘€690 billion and millions of jobs’

According to the German Economic Institute (IW), Germany's exit from the EU – the so-called Dexit – would cost millions of jobs and significantly reduce the country's prosperity.

Published: 19 May 2024 18:04 CEST
'Dexit' would cost Germany '€690 billion and millions of jobs'

In a study presented by the Cologne-based institute on Sunday, the authors showed that a Dexit would cause real GDP to drop by 5.6 percent after just five years. This means that Germany would lose 690 billion euros in value creation during this time.

In addition, Germany as an export nation is dependent on trade with other countries, especially with other EU countries, warned the authors. Companies and consumers in Germany would therefore feel the consequences “clearly” and around 2.5 million jobs would be lost.

The study is based on the consequences of Britain’s exit from the EU, such as the loss of trade agreements and European workers.

Taken together, the losses in economic output in Germany in the event of a Dexit would be similar to those seen during Covid-19 and the energy cost crisis in the period from 2020 to 2023, the authors warned.

Brexit is therefore “not an undertaking worth imitating,” warned IW managing director Hubertus Bardt. Rather, Brexit is a “warning for other member states not to carelessly abandon economic integration.”

Leader of the far-right AfD party Alice Weidel described Great Britain’s exit from the European Union at the beginning of the year as a “model for Germany.”

In an interview published in the Financial Times, Weidel outlined her party’s approach in the event her party came to power: First, the AfD would try to resolve its “democratic deficit” by reforming the EU. If this was not successful, a referendum would be called on whether Germany should remain in the EU.

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