It’s official! Germany is in campaign mode.
Sure, it’s still a year to go before the next general election, scheduled for September 28, 2025. The coalition government led by Social Democrat (SPD) Chancellor Olaf Scholz, however, seems at the end of its tether, and the political parties, within the government and without, have started to act as if elections may come at any time.
There is no trust left between Scholz and Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who is also the leader of the pro-business, fiscally hawkish Free Democrats (FDP), after Lindner used the summer break to sow confusion about the constitutionality of the 2025 budget. Scholz had to interrupt his holiday in France to set the coalition record straight. Linder and the FDP have been acting as the “opposition in government” for some time now. They are no longer seeking “progress” with their coalition partners, but trying to improve dismal polls by playing the role of the eternal contrarian, hoping not to drop below the 5-percent “hurdle” set for entering Germany’s parliament.
In fact, the FDP is ever more openly eyeing the exit. In a recent Bundestag debate, the party’s secretary-general Bijan Djir-Sarai said that there was “no coalition government when it comes to migration policy.” Lindner himself has talked of a "decisive fall," hinting at make-or-break time in the coming weeks.
Scholz’ relationship with Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens), who is also economy and climate minister, is still intact. However, Habeck, too, used the summer to start looking ahead to the next election, signaling his unhappiness with the FDP. In a government led by him, Habeck, said, Lindner wouldn’t be finance minister. Habeck will be the Greens’ “candidate for chancellor” after the previous choice, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who flopped in the 2021 elections, told CNN in July that she didn’t fancy a second run and preferred to focus on the problems of the world (of which there are many) for the remainder of this parliamentary term.
It’s Merz
The real opposition, Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), have also established clarity early. Last week, unofficial “candidate for chancellor” contender Hendrik Wüst, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia where he leads a successful CDU-Greens government, swung firmly behind CDU party leader Friedrich Merz—an erstwhile rival of long-term Chancellor Angela Merkel who took over the party leadership on his third attempt after the 2021 election defeat and now finally sees his time coming, at the age of 68. Bavarian State Premier Markus Söder and leader of the CDU’s regional sister party CSU, who had also fancied his chances, quickly concurred and thus the CDU/CSU’s “K question” (K for Kanzlerkandidat, or "candidate for chancellor") was sorted within 24 hours. (In 2021, Söder wrecked the Christian Democrats’ chances by conducting a drawn-out battle with CDU leader Armin Laschet as to who would be the better candidate.)
For his part, Scholz welcomed Merz as his opponent. Speaking from Astana, Kazakhstan, he told the travelling press: “That’s fine by me” (“Es ist mir recht”), confirming the chancellor’s apparently long-held believe that in a Scholz-Merz match, the emotions-free incumbent will get the better of a volatile Merz. However, some in his party don’t think Scholz’ candidature is a done deal. They would prefer the, surprisingly, vastly more popular German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, to become “candidate for chancellor.” Pistorius has always excluded the possibility, and it would be a tricky time for the SPD to switch horses like that. The SPD's narrow win in regional election in the state of Brandenburg on September 22 calmed some nerves. But with the party polling stubbornly at around only 15 percent nationally, against 32 percent for the CDU/CSU, it may become desperate.
Astana? Yes, Germany is still conducting foreign policy. Focusing on Central Asia, including a high-level visit by the chancellor, is perhaps the most interesting geostragic move on Berlin’s part, though critics question whether the Scholz government is all in (while some in the chancellery deny it is even a geostrategic move).
The heated political situation, however, underpinned by strong showings in recent regional elections by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and, to a lesser extent, the new nationalist, pro-Russia, anti-immigration with “socialist” economic policies Sahra Wagenknecht Movement (BSW) has caused the government to act chaotically. In doing so, it has shown little regard for the foreign and European policy implications.
Goodbye, Schengen?
Case in point is the reintroduction of border controls at all of Germany’s borders as part of various measures to tackle “illegal” immigration in the wake of an Islamic State-inspired terrorist knife attack in late August, which left three people dead and eight injured. The suspected perpetrator was a 26-year-old refugee from Syria, who had arrived in Germany in December 2022 and applied for asylum. Because he had travelled via Bulgaria, he should have been deported in mid-2023 in order for his asylum application to be handled there, in accordance with the European Union’s “Dublin-III” regulation, but wasn’t.
Sending the already stretched federal police to the borders is, migration experts agree, a very ineffective way of trying to stop “illegals” at Germany’s frontiers. It’s a populist move, a chaotic attempt to placate AfD and BSW voters in particular. Germany’s neighbors weren’t informed beforehand, and the measures did not go down well. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk angrily cancelled a visit. Worse, Germany is thus undermining the Schengen agreement, which allows for passport-less travel across much of the EU, one of the most tangible “freedoms” that European integration has brought. While “temporary” controls are allowed under Schengen, Merz and the CDU have been pushing for going even further and openly breaking European law by demanding pushbacks of all asylum seekers.
Thus, the Scholz government, which had started as the most pro-EU integrationist government ever, according to their coalition agreement, has started down a slippery slope showing that even Germany is not immune to the political “logic” and emotions that inter alia inspired the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote. With possibly 12 months of political instability and chaotic government reactions ahead, and against the backdrop of a stalling economy, this all bodes ill for Germany as a European leader and reliable ally. Once hailed as a “stability anchor,” the country is showing that it, too, could lose its moorings.
Henning Hoff is Executive Editor of INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY.
