TICK-TOCK (or as Germans say: “Tick-Tack”). Time is short in Berlin. Having spent almost six months reaching a coalition deal, Germany’s new government—which takes office today—has just three-and-a-half years until the next election is due, in 2021. Shave off the election campaign and that becomes three, another six months of election build-up and it becomes two-and-a-half. In any case the governing parties have agreed to take stock after just two years; a natural point for the reluctant and electorally battered Social Democrats (SPD) to start differentiating themselves more aggressively than last time and for the Christian Democrats (CDU) to start lining up a new leader.
It is, you see, very unlikely that Mrs Merkel will seek to run again. So her swearing in for her fourth term as chancellor today, under the glass dome of the restored Reichstag building in Berlin, was probably her last. Even that moment, something of a formality once coalition deals are done, added to the mood of transition. Some MPs gasped in surprise when the result came, because although the roughly 8% of grand coalition MPs who voted against Mrs Merkel was a similar proportion to last time, that coalition’s much-reduced majority following the election in September made the result perilously narrow. The chancellor’s reelection was carried with a majority of just 9 votes above the threshold required (355 of 709 MPs).
After the vote Mrs Merkel was sworn in, to be followed by her cabinet. It includes some ministers from the last one (like Ursula von der Leyen, who remains the CDU defence secretary) but also new ones (like Jens Spahn and Julia Klöckner, both tipped as possible successors to Mrs Merkel). Olaf Scholz, who served as labour minister in Mrs Merkel’s first government, from 2005, is back from a stint as mayor of Hamburg as the SPD finance minister. Horst Seehofer of the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, takes an interior ministry expanded to include “homeland” matters.
What to do with the limited time and a modest majority? The chancellor does not ruminate publicly about her legacy, but—a keen reader of history books—has presumably contemplated it privately. Big-picture themes that have featured heavily in her recent speeches, like the need to promote high-tech industries, improve the governance of globalisation and support development in Africa, might hint at the projects on which she would like to define the final chapters of her chancellorship.
Really, though, scope for progress is limited. On the domestic front the concessions and restraint required to pull the CDU, the CSU and the SPD back together for one more reluctant grand coalition made—perhaps unavoidably—for a fairly visionless coalition deal that mostly disburses the fruits of Germany’s economic boom to various favoured interest groups and tackles issues like immigrant integration. On the world stage, though the chancellor’s sensible agenda and mature leadership is welcome amid the current turmoil, the challenges are surely too big for Berlin to contribute much more than damage control in the next couple of years.
The best chance of the grand coalition achieving something of substance lies between the domestic and the world planes: on the European one. The benign economic conditions combined with the election of Emmanuel Macron, about as German-friendly a candidate as Berlin could hope for, to the French presidency creates a rare opportunity to reform the EU. That means closer economic- and foreign- and defence-policy integration, but most significantly (with Italy’s chaotic election result just the latest reminder that the euro-zone crisis was never permanently dispatched) integration of the single currency.
The good news is that Mr Macron has a plan, set out in his speech at the Sorbonne in Paris days after the German election; that Mr Scholz is more amenable to such things than Wolfgang Schäuble, his CDU predecessor; and that Mrs Merkel seems minded not to abandon her new French ally. The bad news is that the coalition deal is vague on how far Germany should go towards Mr Macron’s proposals; that much of the CDU/CSU and the German commentariat is sceptical; and that the two parties to join the Bundestag at the election, the liberal-conservative Free Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany party, are both even more eurosceptic. Even counting on the pro-European Greens, also in the opposition, that leaves little room for rebellions in the parliamentary ranks of the diminished grand coalition. Meanwhile political drama in the euro-zone’s wobbly third-largest economy will hardly alleviate the widespread doubts in Berlin, as Charlemagne notes this week.
But even in the face of such difficulties, some boldness from Mrs Merkel would be welcome. The chance to work with Mr Macron and others to shore up Europe’s currency union, ideally before the next crisis, was always—as Kaffeeklatsch has long argued—the best case for the parties in question to hold their noses and form another stodgy grand coalition. Though somewhat weakened by the election result and the palaver of coalition negotiations, the chancellor remains popular and still has a stock of political capital to spend. Strengthening Europe would support her other domestic (competitiveness, tackling the causes of political extremism) and global (globalisation, security) priorities.
And the timetable fits. Europe has a few months to push forward initial reforms and set out longer-term plans ahead of next spring’s European elections. In the months after that the constellations of power that emerge in Brussels will partly dictate how such longer-term plans proceed. So the next 18-24 months are a golden opportunity for Germany to work with France and others to start solving some of Europe’s intractable problems, however incrementally and imperfectly. That would take Mrs Merkel up to the point when, in any case, Berlin insiders expect prospective successors like the ambitious Mr Spahn to start agitating for her to make way. The chancellor has the time, opportunity and most importantly the good reasons to achieve something of substance on Europe, but only if she is willing to fight for it in Berlin. Now to see if she does.