Germany’s next scheduled national election is still more than a year away yet it’s already clear that migration will dominate campaigning.
The risk is that it becomes a distraction from the real challenges confronting Europe’s biggest economy.
In a fiery speech in parliament in Berlin today, Chancellor Olaf Scholz lashed out at opposition leader Friedrich Merz, accusing the likely conservative candidate for his job of chasing cheap headlines in the battle against irregular migration.
In truth, both men are sounding tougher on immigration to try to check extreme forces on the right and left that want to slash migrant numbers. Frustration with Scholz’s coalition on the topic is a key reason why the far-right AfD party won a recent regional election.
Polls suggest that anti-immigration forces will again make gains in a Sept. 22 vote in Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin and is home to Scholz’s Potsdam constituency.
There are, in fact, plenty of reasons for German voter dismay. The economy is stagnating and Volkswagen yesterday scrapped decades-old job protections, a symbol of the deepening woes facing the country’s once all-powerful carmakers.
Yet as Mario Draghi so meticulously documented in his report published Monday, all Europe must reform to better compete with the US and China. That means developing advanced technologies, meeting ambitious climate targets, bolstering defense capabilities and securing critical raw materials, among other European Union measures.
While diagnosing the bloc’s ills, his parallel proposal for the issuance of common EU bonds to help finance the cure immediately ran into opposition from Germany, among others.
As things stand, Merz and his CDU/CSU alliance are in pole position to win next September’s election. But he remains unpopular, and it’s unclear how a Merz-led coalition would do any better than Scholz in future-proofing the economy.
For Germany, as for Europe, the road ahead looks anything but smooth.— Iain Rogers