Germany set to go to polls in February: what to expect
Monday, 16th December 2024
Historic and illustrative scenes are unfolding in Berlin today. If he gets his way this afternoon, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) will lose a vote of confidence in the Bundestag. There is talk that the AfD will join the SPD (against the ultimate wishes of their own boss) in voting for the Chancellor, in the hope of keeping him in an impossible position, and denying (or at least delaying) what seems like the inevitable victory of the CDU’s Friedrich Merz, a Russia hawk, and unleashing another period of crisis and impasse. Interesting times.
To recap: this follows Scholz’s decision, on the same morning as Donald Trump was declared President-elect of the United States, to finally break off the three-way ‘traffic light’ coalition between his SPD, the Greens and the perennially difficult FDP, who it was revealed recently had prepared a “precise plan” for bringing down the coalition themselves, up to and including “open warfare” with their supposed partners in government.
Despite some nervous rumours being thrown around before the vote, Scholz should be confident that he will lose resoundingly. This will prompt President Steinmeier to dissolve the Bundestag, and set things in motion for a Federal Election to be held on the pre-agreed date of 23rd February.
What can we expect from the next few months?
A quick look forward to the weeks and months ahead.
Everything points to the idea that a CDU-led coalition is almost a foregone conclusion. However, even if that headline seems pretty certain, a lot of important details could change underneath it.
It goes without saying that things are incredibly volatile. But the additional complication is that this election campaign will happen in the very depths of winter, meaning that campaigning will be largely conducted in the ‘air’ (via the media) rather than on the ‘ground’ (door-knocking, meet-the-candidate events at beer tents, etc). It’s unclear what impact this will have. A more expensive media-based campaign should favour the more established (and well-heeled) Volksparteien (CDU/CSU and SPD), leading to a narrowing of the gap between the two at the expense of the others. But the ‘challenger’ parties, especially the AfD, have made excellent use of social media of late. Although there is probably a ‘ceiling’ on the AfD’s support nationally of around 25% at most, a strong AfD vote fuelled by a good online campaign could seriously harm the SPD’s chances of a new Grand Coalition with the CDU (the most common way the Federal Republic has been governed since 1949), and open the prospect of another complex three-way coalition between the CDU, SPD and Greens. There’s also the entertaining subplot of the FDP: having torpedoed their own government, it is unclear if they will make it over the required 5% ‘hurdle’ to get back into parliament, or at least get a few ‘direct mandates’ from some constituencies to have some representation.
Despite the tumultuous backdrop, those familiar with the mood within the SPD tell me they are quietly confident that they can turn things around, or at least put themselves in a strong position to negotiate good coalition terms with the CDU/CSU. Their overall message to the German electorate will be one of peace and security, both externally and internally. People, they admitted, were sick to the back teeth of the ‘Ampel’ (especially with the FDP), and rightfully so. But people still trust the SPD as competent governors. They point to Merz’s lack of substance and experience (he has never held high office, such as ‘Minister-President’ of a federal state, unlike the incumbent Scholz, who was also First Mayor of the city-state Hamburg), and suggest that voters will agree that he is not a trusted pair of hands for troubled times. Previous SPD voters, they hope, might therefore think twice before going elsewhere when they are stood in the Wahlkabine in Feburary.
The SPD are also betting that Merz’s strong support for Ukraine will prove to be a weak point with voters. For all the trouble it has caused Scholz on the international stage, the social democrats believe that there is widespread domestic support for Scholz’s emphasis on ‘prudence’ in Germany’s military support (for instance, refusing to grant the transfer to Ukraine of long-range ‘Taurus’ missiles — a move which Merz has recently told Kyiv he would back).
There is also some interesting detail as to why the threat of Boris Pistorius to Scholz’s candidacy seemed to pass without major drama. Pistorius has backed Scholz for now, because if Scholz had stepped back before the election, the next in line would be Lars Klingbeil, the party’s General Secretary. By backing Scholz now, Pistorius will line himself up for a proper contest after the election— and keep himself unsullied by leading what will be a very difficult election campaign.
In other news
Energy
Deutsche Energy Terminal (DET), the company which manages the Liquified Natural Gas terminal at Wilhelmshaven, has announced that they are planning to pause imports at the site for the first quarter of 2025. This comes as part of the company’s efforts to “define a framework for future supplies from the terminals which is acceptable to the market” now that prices climbed down significantly from the heights of the gas crisis after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The report mentions concerns about overcapacities in importing infrastructure: DET expects to commission a further two terminals in Q1 to add to the existing three (Wilhelmhaven, Brunsbüttel and Mukran).
The 31% state-owned Austrian oil, gas and chemical company OMV has cancelled its supply contract with Gazprom with immediate effect, citing ‘several fundamental breaches of contract’ by the Russian supplier. OMV was one of Gazprom’s largest remaining clients in Western Europe. The pair’s contract, signed in 2006, was due to run until 2040. An arbitration tribunal recently awarded OMV €230 million in damages as a result of a dispute over undelivered gas which had been held up in Germany in 2022. Although Austrian politicians have feted the move as an end to the country’s energy dependence on Russia, Handelsblatt emphasises that the country will continue to import Russian gas via pipelines that traverse Ukraine, at least until the current transit agreement between the warring countries expires at the end of the year.