The departure of Angela Merkel plunges Germany into uncertainty. Merkel will go down in history as the first woman to win an election to the German chancellery and as the second longest-serving leader of the country. She is retiring from office a week before Helmut Kohl, who ruled from 1982 to 1998 and who holds the record of the longest-serving German chancellor.
Merkel ruled through the administrations of 4 American presidents, 5 British prime ministers, 8 Italian ministers, 4 French presidents and managed to survive 4 crises that marked her rule: The financial world crisis; the European debt crisis; the refugee crisis; and the current pandemic. She has merit in raising the profile and influence of Germany in Europe; keeping a divided and conflictive European Union together, reducing the level of unemployment and leaving healthier finances in Germany; however, she also leaves with a record of deficiencies in the digitalisation of government services; reduced investment in infrastructure; little progress on green policies; a fractured transition and the collapse of her own party, the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU) that lost the last elections.
Under Scholz’s leadership, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) won with just over 25%, enough to negotiate with both the Green Party and the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) a coalition. Given the difficulty in reaching common ground between 3 parties, the patience and persuasiveness of the new chancellor will be put to the test. Scholz faces several challenges ahead that will also be decisive for the European Union as a whole, and Germany´s role in international politics. The main short-term challenge is to give concrete meaning to the term “Strategic Autonomy of the European Union” that aims to provide the Union greater sovereignty in security affairs, as well as the design of a common security policy after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the signing of AUKUS, the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US.
In the long term, it faces the slow but consistent rise in power of the far-rightpolitical party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which in the last election in the regions of Thuringia and Saxony managed to win a quarter of the vote. The AfD is capitalising on Merkel’s electoral failures and the possible mandatory ruling on Covid-19 vaccines to broaden its base. The growing democratic backsliding in Poland and Hungary must also be worrying for the incoming administration as they are countries of high economic importance to Germany. So far, the administration of Merkel was characterised for having a relatively soft stand towards the growing populist and authoritarian policies in both countries. Scholz will have to decide whether he continues with the same approach or pushes for a harsher one. The increased rapprochement with Russia as a result of the Nord Strom 2 gas pipeline that connects Moscow with Berlin is causing suspicion in Eastern Europe by reviving the old ghosts of Germany’s Nazi past. Add to this the challenge of China’s resurgence and the panorama becomes even more complicated. While it remains true that elections are not fought, nor won, over foreign policy, both voters and the new German government should remember that German prosperity depends, to a large extent, on the security and stability of its neighbours.