🟡 German election special: Berlin gets a shake-up

Good afternoon from Berlin.

Some say it is the election of Europe’s near future.
Germans are heading to the voting booths on Sunday, and Brussels is hoping that Berlin will throw off its year-long hibernation.
Friedrich Merz is the clear favourite to become Germany’s next chancellor, and his Christian Democrats are solidly pro-European. So too are all the parties that might be in the running to join a future coalition.
But while people are counting on Merz’s leadership, just how strong will he be? And how stable, predictable and reliable will his new government be? In Brussels, they’ll be praying for a decisive and steady government in Berlin, but the possibility Merz could have to build a three-way coalition might quickly bring back memories of Olaf Scholz’s ever-bickering collection of ministers. Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November, after all, prompting elections to be brought forward.
The election campaign was dominated by worries about migration and economic malaise. For Brussels, and those watching the German results from other EU capitals, a key question will be how much of a Germany-first tact the new bosses in Berlin will take as they tackle those issues.
As a European heavyweight, Berlin has significant influence on any decision taken in Brussels, and the choices made in Berlin can have big consequence on the future of the EU. Germany’s fiscal might, moreover, is usually needed for any grand EU-wide undertakings.
Catch up on our latest coverage of the election below. And don’t miss our live-coverage on Sunday.
- Kjeld Neubert

The race for the Bundeskanzleramt seems to be a done deal. With the Christian Democrats comfortably leading the polls, the real question even before the election seems to be what coalition options their candidate, Friedrich Merz, will have once the votes are counted.

Chances are, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats will be part of the mix as a junior partner, although Scholz himself likely won’t be. Whether Merz will need a third player, like the Greens or the liberal Free Democrats, hinges on how many parties make it past the 5% threshold to get into the Bundestag, as the lower house of Germany’s parliament is known. One party is already planning to circumvent the threshold – find out more here.

As per Merz, another thing seems to be for sure: the rising far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), led by Alice Weidel, won’t be part of the government. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t making waves. Read more about one of the more interesting female far-right leaders in Europe here.

While the AfD is still far away from a governing position, the once rock-solid “firewall” Germany’s mainstream political parties had built up against them has started to show cracks, thanks in part to Merz himself, whose Christian Democrats brought a vote in parliament on migration measures that only passed with the support from AfD lawmakers. Find more on that here.

Besides migration – an issue that has favoured the far-right – Germany's ailing economy has dominated the campaign trail. The Christian Democrats have high ambitions to revive economic growth, with Merz stating that he still wants to stick to Germany’s export-driven economic model. However, a prospective financing gap could derail their plan. Read more here.

The real test? How much of that plan will be left after hammering out a coalition agreement, and how much will be possible to get through during their term in power – a curse that Scholz’s ever-bickering failed three-party “traffic light” coalition came to know all too well.

With the Christian Democrats likely to co-govern with the SPD – as either a ‘grand coalition’ or with a third wheel – it’s well worth taking a look at both election manifestos to see where they align and where they seem bound to clash. And to no one's surprise, one of the biggest sticking points is their approach to stimulating the slumping economy. Here’s a breakdown of their core differences.

As previously mentioned, reaching an agreement among the parties to form a government could be difficult, and will come down to how many parties make it into the Bundestag. The latest poll shows a tight race to beat the 5% hurdle:

Debate over German defence policy had the tendency to be a sleepy one – until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That prompted Scholz to declare a Zeitenwende – a turn of the tide in Berlin’s defence policy. Although he refused to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles, Scholz was committed to increase the defence budget, and sacked his finance minister, Christian Lindner, partly because Lindner opposed to take on extra borrowing – an idea on which he backpaddled later on.

Urgent new concerns about European defence raised by Donald Trump’s return to the White House has pushed the issue to the top of the agenda in Brussels, where many will turn to Germany for both leadership and money. Just on Friday, Merz said Europeans shouldn’t bank on Trump honouring NATO guarantees and need to be able to defend the continent themselves

With Merz as chancellor, the German government could drop its opposition to EU defence bonds and joint security funding. Read more about it here and here.

A major theme of Germany’s economic slowdown is a crisis in the car industry, one of Germany’s hallmark sectors and long a symbol of German high-end industrial might. As German carmakers suffer in competition from low-cost Chinese EV imports, among other problems, while electric cars might soon become cheaper as most parties have endorsed the further EVs promotion in their campaigns.

While the economy has dominated every televised debate, there’s another topic that dominated campaign posters in 2019 and 2021 but has now left the public discourse almost entirely – climate change. Germany’s likely future leader has bashed Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens and his policies on more than one occasion, alluding to the roll back some of his measures. Even Habeck himself admitted to some failure.

On climate change, and energy policy as well, there seems to be little consensus between the Christian Democrats and the SPD, as our analysis shows. A detailed look at Merz’s plans can be found here.

Another topic that has been left on the wayside is Germany’s future agricultural policy – despite the argument that last year’s farmer protests helped hasten the end for Scholz’s government. Faced with subsidy cuts due to a forced federal budget cut, the agricultural sector made its voice heard all the way into the EU elections.

For the Christian Democrats, the direction taken by current Agricultural Minister Cem Özdemir of the Greens took is deeply flawed – one more reason they would rather not govern alongside them, as you can read here.

The Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has made it clear that they have their eyes on the Agriculture Ministry. Euractiv sat down with CSU’s Günther Felßner, Germany’s likely next agriculture minister, to discuss his priorities and his views on the current agri-discussions in Brussels.

Last – and very much least – in the current discourse, health has been almost entirely forgotten. Nonetheless, Germany’s pharmaceutical sector is hoping for a stimulus by cutting back bureaucracy and reducing the cost of doing business, as shown here.

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