If one expects three qualities from the Germans in Brussels, then these are: firstly reliability, secondly reliability, thirdly reliability. After 16 years with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the partners in the European Union firmly believe that things will take their predetermined course in Germany. These days, France’s representatives are frequently asking when Germany will have a government capable of acting again, perhaps by October? You will receive an answer from Germany experts that is only half joking: it will definitely work by October. October 2022.
The German elections hit the EU at a delicate time. It is important to bring large projects to a successful conclusion, above all the Green Deal, the huge climate protection program that has now been passed through the EU institutions as a legislative package and, in the end, will have to be negotiated by the heads of government. In the first half of 2022, France will take over the presidency of the Council and thus the direction of the EU’s Council of Ministers, the decision-making body of the states. President Emmanuel Macron would like to shine as the ruler of Europe – L’Europe, c’est moi! – before he has to put himself up for re-election to his compatriots in April. But the Germans may not be of great help to him because of the foreseeable difficulties in forming a government.
That would be a big mishap, for Macron and for Europe, says French MEP Fabienne Keller. Just a few days ago she was visiting Macron in Paris with a delegation from her liberal group “Renew Europe”, and she is still amazed by the President’s ongoing European euphoria. During a conversation on the sidelines of the plenary session in Strasbourg, she says in every detail that Macron is familiar with EU projects, for example the abbreviations DSA and DMA – laws that set new rules for the Internet and contain powerful US online companies.
Fabienne Keller, former mayor of Strasbourg, as an Alsatian a staunch European, does not want to interfere in the German election campaign. The main thing is that the Franco-German axis remains intact. At the end she added “Just a little regret”: that Europe is apparently not a big issue in the German election campaign. Many in Brussels share the amazement and some are worried.
Fear of the “red threat”
In the upper floors of the Brussels headquarters of power, strict neutrality was of course decreed before the German election, this applies to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as well as to her opponent Charles Michel, as President of the Council representing the 27 heads of state and government of the EU. At least Michel is known to miss Merkel very much. She invented the Belgian as President of the Council, so to speak, and, as has been heard, communicates with him almost every day and gives the impression that she would like to convene the European Council, the summit of the heads of state and government, every week. For many in Brussels this is a gruesome idea.
Whether Armin Laschet or Olaf Scholz makes compromises in the nightly summit rounds instead of Angela Merkel is of secondary importance for many non-Germans in Brussels. Both are valued as staunch Europeans. Ultimately, it is said, it is less a question of the Chancellor than of the coalition.
Traffic light, Jamaica, R2G. Such terms now need to be translated into the 24 official languages of the EU. As a “coalition feu tricolore”, the French-speaking media present the variant with Olaf Scholz as Chancellor of a government made up of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP. Many are wondering how that should work: a party that does not want to increase taxes, in a coalition with two parties that want to finance their promises with a large number of increased taxes. The red-red-green variant appears more grippy. The much-read news site in Brussels Politico headlined: “Why Germany’s red threat is real.”
Brussels is just “the place where you can get beer and chips”
What on earth is going on with you guys? MEPs from all parties will hear the question. Manfred Weber (CSU) gives his answer by striving for the chairmanship of the European People’s Party (EPP) in addition to the position of parliamentary group leader. He wants to initiate a programmatic renewal of the Christian Democratic parties in Europe. Conclusions about what he thinks of the current programmatic state of the conservatives in Germany may not be entirely absurd.
The German Social Democrats in the EU Parliament, long-suffering for many years, do not yet fully trust their new poll success. But satisfaction can be seen that the old hierarchy between the SPD and the Greens in Germany could soon be restored. “Like a melon” is a popular saying among the Social Democrats, the EU climate policy must be pursued, “green on the outside and red on the inside”. Only the social democrats are able to implement climate policy in a socially acceptable manner. A claim that in turn pissed off Green MEPs.
Despite all party-political disputes, there is a perception that unites all Germans in Brussels and Strasbourg: that the election campaigners showed sobering disinterest in European issues. For many in the Berlin bubble, Brussels, says an SPD member of parliament, is only “the place where you can get beer and chips”.
The green top candidate Annalena Baerbock has announced that if she wins the election she will book Brussels as her first travel destination, not Paris. That would have been a European fairy tale: Former German EU parliamentary intern is coming back to Brussels as Chancellor. Now it won’t work. Baerbock’s party colleague Sven Giegold, spokesman for the German Greens in the European Parliament, is asked whether he is sad about it. His face says: wrong topic.
Will the EU end up in the museum of globalization?
Giegold is a refreshingly bulky person who prefers to get to the bottom of things instead of dealing with sensitive symbolic politics. What bothers him in this election campaign is, in addition to the fall in the Greens’ polls, of course, the lack of a vision for Europe outside of his party. “Support for a real European democracy has disappeared from most of the party families that once stood up for it.” He means the old idea of a European government that emerges from the European Parliament and is responsible to it, with the member states in a second chamber like the Bundesrat. First Gerhard Schröder and then Angela Merkel unfortunately said goodbye to Helmut Kohl’s legacy, who still represented this vision, says Giegold.
One can regard this attitude as nostalgic, even as unworldly in view of the centrifugal forces in the EU. Giegold believes that an autonomous European government that cannot be constantly slowed down by national vetoes is vital in the long term. Otherwise, he says, Europe will end up in the “Museum of Globalization” at some point.
Like Giegold, many in Brussels are convinced that Europe urgently needs an energy supply so that projects like the Green Deal are not hacked down again in the end of the night in rounds of crises. It is often said that the gigantic Corona aid pot can only be the beginning to make Europe future-proof. The view goes to Paris. And to Berlin.