Berlin Bulletin: Scholz won’t be lectured — Coalition time of reckoning — Art of the insult

Опубликовано: Friday, 24 February 2023 11:48

A weekly newsletter on German politics, with news and analysis on the new government.

By FLORIAN EDER

with GABRIEL RINALDI

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SCHOLZ ON SCHOLZ: Chancellor Olaf Scholz explained himself, sort of, one year into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Asked, in a long TV interview that aired late on Thursday, about his leadership qualities in that challenging period, he appeared to be happy with his performance: His steady — some say hesitant — course in supplying Ukraine with weapons? “I feel supported by a majority,” he said. “There are many citizens who fear that we are going too far.” Precisely for that reason, he added, there is an “overwhelming majority” that agrees with his “considered course.”

No lectures please: The criticism from partners both inside his coalition and outside the country? “Citizens can rest assured that I will not be driven crazy by interviews and public appearances,” he said. Why he wouldn’t say that Ukraine has to win this war? Scholz said he is keen to “express myself precisely.” That means no less than this, he said: “It’s about Ukraine being able to defend its independence, its integrity, its state sovereignty and its freedom.” And asked about Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s view that Germany still wants to be “half pregnant” when it comes to Russia, he quipped back: “Allow me to find this a bit ridiculous … Germany doesn’t have to listen to accusations from anyone on this.”

Will the war still be ongoing a year from now? Scholz paused for several seconds, then said: “That’s one of my biggest concerns, that this is now going to be a very long, drawn-out war with incredible destruction and losses.” For that reason, he said, he will continue what he has been doing: Not slacken the support for Ukraine, but at the same time do everything possible to prevent a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. Scholz reiterated that he will always act in close cooperation with Western partners. Next Thursday, he will travel to the U.S. for this purpose, where he will hold talks with President Joe Biden on Friday. It will be the chancellor’s second visit to the White House (this time without journalists traveling with him). Among the most important topics will be the war and other security issues such as dealing with China, as the U.S. side announced.

‘OH MY GOD, IT’S REALLY HAPPENING’: POLITICO is out with this definitive account of the days and hours leading up to the events of February 24, 2022. Our colleagues Suzanne Lynch, Lili Bayer and Jacopo Barigazzi spoke to some of the most senior figures involved in the events of a year ago — prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days. Said NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg: “The day before the invasion, on the 23rd, I was planning to be in Den Haag to give a speech. I canceled the visit to Den Haag to be in Brussels. And I remember that, when I went to bed, I was absolutely certain that I was going to be woken up late in the night, and that’s exactly what happened. I was told that they have started.”

ZEITENWENDE, ONE YEAR IN

TIME OF RECKONING: The war against Ukraine not only upended, in national politics, a decades-long belief — in hindsight, some call it naiveté — about security and defense policies. One more thing that has been constitutive of the policymaking, but more importantly politics, of a wealthy country is coming to an end. Simply spending money on everybody’s priorities is not a viable option: Not all conflicts between coalition partners can be resolved by buying everyone a chocolate of their choice. It’s time to focus on the essentials (and this in cloudy times: The German economy contracted in the final quarter of last year, according to data released Friday by the statistics office in its second downward revision of growth estimates).

New situation: Some current troubles in the coalition appear to be a number of petty fights on the surface — they appear to not even have found yet a window suitable for everyone for talks among the bigwigs representing the three governing parties in what’s called coalition committee. Not a biggie, said Scholz on the recent disputes: “I’m not surprised that there’s a little noise now and then when you’re working so hard.”

Bigger picture: But take one step back and you’ll see that it’s about reckoning with the new times: According to a Süddeutsche Zeitung report, around 30 projects of the coalition are currently blocked or delayed due to disagreements and unresolved financing issues. The three parties have just very different ways of coping. Let’s have a look.

SPD in discord: It’s Vladimir Putin’s war that is forcing both a redefinition of and limitation to the German government’s priorities. A special €100 billion fund for defense has been set up, a pledge to respect or even outspend NATO’s spending goal of 2 percent of nationial economic output has been made, and new Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has started to request, in that context, additional funds of up to €10 billion in next year’s budget. Money-wise, the Zeitenwende is happening, make no mistake. But some, especially on the left wing of the chancellor’s Social Democratic Party, have yet to realize that an old routine — that for every euro spent on defense, they also get money for redistribution in social policies — is unlikely to apply any longer.

FDP between a rock and a hard place: Their problem is, the money pots aren’t bottomless — unless the government decides to declare yet another extraordinary external shock when drawing up the 2024 budget, as an excuse to disregard or circumvent, once again, the debt brake rule enshrined in the Constitution. Finance Minister Christian Lindner doesn’t appear to be keen for his budget to be challenged at the Constitutional Court (and is no more keen for a constitutional change.) As he has excluded tax hikes and his liberal Free Democrats have come under pressure after losses — some severe, some catastrophic for them — in the past five consecutive state elections, don’t expect that to change soon.

Greens in defiance: No doubt the fight against climate change is the other big — shared — priority of the government. It may not be the only one any more, and not the only one that allows for moral high ground, but that’s what leading Greens have coped well with, being at the forefront of the debate to donate arms to Ukraine. What the party is still nibbling at is the friction between ideology and pragmatism: Efforts to reach carbon neutrality while satisfying a massive electricity demand in the biggest EU economy will have to be huge. But the Greens have not yet started to challenge their anti-nuclear dogma, to the point of being behind a new dispute just this week with France about the use of nuclear energy to produce hydrogen.

THE ART OF THE INSULT

FROM BAVARIA WITH LOVE: Political Ash Wednesday gatherings have long been part of Germany’s national political folklore. Like on cattle and horse markets that were, centuries ago, at the origin of today’s rallies, language is edgy and counterparts are not spared. Not even among partners: Hubert Aiwanger, Bavarian deputy state premier, had greetings go out from Deggendorf, the pearl at the river Danube where his Free Voters met, to the (as center-right) Christian Social Union in Passau. Referring to a long series of plagiarism incidents, he called his bigger coalition partner’s gathering “the largest meeting of ex-holders of a doctorate degree.”

Here come the best of the week’s political insults: You’ll also learn about Lower Bavaria’s proudest towns where these events have been traditionally held.

Comrade Lindner: Martin Huber, the CSU secretary general, took a swipe at the governing parties in Berlin; his characterization of the Free Democrats’ leader, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, as a left-winger may be exclusive to the CSU. But what’s better than musing that, for Lindner, “the Internationale is played to march in” when you want to be seen as the real fiscally conservative party.

Bavaria great again? Lindner, a good rhetorician, took pleasure in shooting back from his podium in Dingolfing: “When [Bavarian state premier] Markus Söder compares me to Varoufakis on finance, he shows that when it comes to the truth, he is the Trump of German politics,” Lindner said. “Embracing trees on the one hand, and at the same time having the chainsaw prepared … The CSU, that’s the party for people for whom one opinion is not enough, but who want all opinions and the opposite,” he said.

Opinions and underpants: Green Party leader Ricarda Lang, speaking in Landshut, followed the same lead, quipping at Söder: “What I do care about is when a prime minister changes his political positions on combustion engines like others change their underpants,” she said, referring to Söder’s mobile stance on banning non-electric cars. Leaving the big beast to the boss, Ludwig Hartmann, a senior Bavarian Green, had to be content with mocking the junior partner in the state government, but made sure to carefully rerail his joke: It’s a good thing “if Bavaria is to become the Mecca of artificial intelligence,” he said, adding — after a dramatic pause — that, especially looking at Aiwanger’s work, “a little artificial intelligence couldn’t hurt indeed.”

Söder likes roast pork: Söder appealed to what he appears to consider a sense of local tradition and pledged allegiance to a meat: “We’d rather eat roast pork than insects or maggot muesli,” he said, not sparing any cliché of current and past identity debates, inviting the Greens to have generous helpings of house crickets and grain mold beetles, now approved as food, and “eat the stuff themselves.” Söder acknowledged that Economy Minister Robert Habeck may be “a kind of Captain Iglo from the coast” — a trusted advertisement figure, that is — but in reality, he warned all the credulous fools out there, he is “the worst economics minister of all time.”

‘Pistol-ius’ asks for money: There were more nicknames and name jokes. “New Defense Minister Pistorius — sometimes one thinks Pistolius is starting to be more accurate — as now he’s asking for even more money for weapons,” said Janine Wissler, chairwoman of the Left, speaking on a boat on the Danube — easier to fill than a town hall for the fringe party.

Respect! Despite his own ribaldries, Lindner cautioned against overdoing the game: “I have the feeling that this kind of rudeness is actually a bit out of date,” Lindner said. Political Ash Wednesday, he advised Söder, shall be a day on which one should also “pay respect” to the political opponent — which Söder did indeed, in a way that showed a significant shift in the political reality. The SPD, once the main opponent, is currently polling at or below 10 percent in Bavaria, and wasn’t even dignified with a single mention.

COMMENTARY BOX

MOVING ALLIANCES: The beauty of a coalition-based parliamentary system is that it is in constant motion. The landscape changes, often imperceptibly, but small steps of the parties toward or away from each other are noticed at some point. This week was an occasion for commentators to take stock.

Chancellor’s sleep: “Olaf Scholz’s true enemy is in his own bed where Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck slumber — seemingly unsuspiciously. But watch out, Chancellor!” The Pioneer‘s Gabor Steingart unsolicitedly advises: “The peaceful and friendly nature is just an act. In truth, the Green ministers are after the head of government; both are speculating on entering the election battle as their party’s candidate for chancellor and then, ultimately, the chancellorship. In their dreams, his chair is their chair,” Steingart writes. “They purposefully inflict minor reputational damage on him again and again: She demands battle tanks while Scholz is still negotiating. Habeck is messing with the finance minister as if there were no higher authority.”

Poor liberal voters: “The fact that Germans are strangers to freedom is not an acceptable explanation for the fact that the Free Democrats are on hare’s feet most of the time,” writes Anna Schneider in Welt, lamenting the lack of hard-core liberalism in the FDP’s actions. “On the contrary, it should be an incentive for them. After all, as part of the state apparatus, the FDP can very well do something. Blowing up the system from the inside, for example.” These are not necessarily hard times for a liberal party, she writes, “if only party members are nimble enough in their convictions. However, precisely because of the liberal party’s agility, these are unbearable times for liberals.”

New conservative alliance: The Bavaria-only CSU should strike an alliance with the Greens after this fall’s state election, writes Roman Deininger in the Süddeutsche Zeitung — it would “one of the few coalition projects that could develop real momentum if implemented with determination,” he argues (against, as he acknowledges, any indication that he’d be listened to). “Especially in the special biotope of Bavaria, where both parties have succeeded in their own way in filling the concept of home with life. And a little movement would do both of them good anyway; they have made themselves all too comfortable — the CSU in its dynastic self-image, the Greens in their feeling of moral superiority.”

WEEK AHEAD

UKRAINIAN CULTURE IN BERLIN: On Monday, historic Cafe Moskau in Berlin-Mitte — listed GDR architecture — will be renamed Cafe Kyiv. Through art, history, and culture, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and many partner organizations want to get to know Ukraine in a new way and hear its diverse voices. Registration is mandatory, click here. At 7 p.m., the SPD parliamentary group will speak about one year of war in Ukraine and one year of Zeitenwende. The event, featuring Defense Minister Boris Pistorius among others, is fully booked, but can be followed digitally.

SECURITY STRATEGY: As a new National Security Strategy is to be finalized soon, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group — the largest opposition party — will, at 11 a.m. on Monday, discuss its own proposals for a National Security Council (which the government dropped, as POLITICO reported) at a digital experts meeting. At 6 p.m., state minister Tobias Lindner, among others, will discuss what the strategy — the one planned by the government — can achieve and what its limits are at the Hamburg State Representation.

STATUS QUO OF DEFENSE: On Tuesday, SPD’s Eva Högl, the Bundestag’s commissioner for the armed forces, will present the 2022 annual report on the state of the Bundeswehr, which is traditionally also published in English on the German parliament’s website (here). The presentation and press briefing starts at 11:30 a.m. at the Federal Press Conference and will be broadcast.

YOUNG EUROPEANS: How do young Europeans between the ages of 18 and 25 deal with the manifold challenges? And what does it mean to them to be Europeans today? The Alfred Herrhausen Society and the Schwarzkopf Foundation invites discussion on those and more questions on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the presentation of the report “Taking Europe Personally: Young Narratives of Europe” which will take place at Q Club.

ONE YEAR OF ZEITENWENDE: Chancellor Olaf Scholz will give a government statement on Thursday at 9 a.m. on the topic “One Year of Zeitenwende — Strengthening Germany’s Security and Alliances, Continuing to Support Ukraine.” His speech will be followed by a debate lasting around 90 minutes. On February 27, 2022, Scholz spoke his most well-known sentence up to this point during his government statement after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “We are living through a watershed era. And that means that the world afterward will no longer be the same as the world before.”

OVER AND OUT

LEADERSHIP LESSON: Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s staff got him a ping-pong table for his birthday this week. The passionate player said thank you, posed for a photo, announced that the piece of equipment will stay at the ministry — and immediately declared it inappropriate for his employees to make use of it: “The problem is, none of us has ever time,” he said, pointing to the collective workload. “So I guess our guests will play.”

THANK YOU: To our editor Jones Hayden and producer Fiona Lally.