EU low priority for German election rivals

Date: 12/09/02

By Karen Carstens

WHEN Germans head to the polls on 22 September to determine who will govern the EU's biggest economy during the next four years, Brussels may not be foremost on their minds.

The reason: Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, 58, a Social Democrat, and his conservative challenger, Edmund Stoiber, 60, have focused on more contentious matters at home during the hot final phase of campaigning, notably jobs and war.

'It has been pretty obvious that EU affairs have played little- to-no role in this federal election,' said Jo Leinen, a Social Democrat MEP from western Germany's tiny Saarland state.

'On the one hand, this is bad, because it has not been a major issue. On the other hand, this is good, because it shows that there is a general consensus on Europe in the German population.'

So where exactly do the election rivals stand on Europe? What can Germany's EU partners expect if a new government led by the Christian Democrats and their smaller sister party, Stoiber's Bavaria-based Christian Social Union, replaces the current centre-left red-green coalition?

Stoiber has criticised failings in German policy on the European Union and said he wants to create a new post of Europe minister that would come under the federal chancellery instead of the foreign ministry.

Still, according to Leinen, the two German candidates hardly differ on the 'first level' of EU policy - a broad vision of an enlarged Union with a strengthened Commission and Parliament.

But, on another level, there are differences, he said.

Unlike the chancellor, for example, Stoiber has said he is against Turkey joining the Union. Moreover, Stoiber, a nuclear energy supporter, would probably be less 'green' on a lot of issues.

As the leader of one of Germany's richest states, he would also push for a stronger Committee of the Regions and 'surf the conservative wave of deregulation,' said Leinen.

'I think that Brussels would see more intervention from Stoiber,' he predicted. 'But he is no Eurosceptic.'

And he certainly is no Jörg Haider. Austria's coalition government collapsed on Monday (9 September) when Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel called for new elections after Susanne Riess-Passer, leader of the Freedom Party, junior partner to his People's Party, was ousted by an internal revolt led by Haider, her anti-enlargement predecessor.

The elections that could spell a widely welcome political sea change in Austria will be held on either 24 November or 1 December.

Whatever the outcome in the German poll, experts predict that differences on key issues such as enlargement and financing - Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU budget - will be minimal.

'[They] will not be particularly great,' Elke Thiel, of the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs, recently said.

Ulrike Guerot, of Berlin's German Society for Foreign Affairs, agreed. Either way, 'the conflict is pre-programmed,' she cautioned.

Stoiber may have spoken out with French President Jacques Chirac in July against the German government's call for bringing forward the EU's proposed agricultural reform from 2006 to 2004, when ten new member states are expected to join the Union but, while Chirac continues to insist upon maintaining the old system of subsidies flowing from the EU alone, the Christian Democrats' party programme calls for 'implementing the principle of national co-financing in the direct payments' - the same thing Schröder has called for.

But Christoph Meyer, a research associate at Cologne University's Department of Political Science, said that if Stoiber is elected a clear difference in leadership style vis-à-vis the EU could emerge.

'When it comes to the EU, Schröder has always behaved like a bull in a china shop,' he said.

'Stoiber,' he predicted, 'would be more of a smooth operator - he's a really thorough German technocrat.'

Moreover, Meyer said,Bavaria has an excellent record of working with Brussels.

In this vein, he added, Stoiber has asked Wolfgang Schäuble, a Christian Democrat who was once Germany's most popular politician, to be his new Europe minister (Schäuble has yet to agree, however).

Having an EU affairs minister in Berlin who works closely with the chancellor and 'stands above' the finance and foreign ministries would be a welcome move, Meyer said.

Hans-Gert Pöttering, chair of the European People's Party in the European Parliament, said: 'A major priority must always be seeking common ground with one's European partners,' adding that Stoiber would be the better man for the job because he would not operate with the 'heavy-handed, last-minute methods' of Schröder.

'One gets the impression with the current chancellor that he views it [the EU] in a purely opportunistic fashion.'

Meanwhile, Sweden's Social Democrat prime minister, Göran Persson, looks set to win that country's national election on Sunday (15 September), although it remains to be seen in a pretty evenly split multi-party race what kind of ruling coalition he will form.

According to analysts, Persson, who plans to hold a referendum next year on Swedish membership of the euro, is unlikely to want to invite anti-single currency Greens back into his government.

When Germans head to the polls on 22 September 2002 to determine who will govern the EU's biggest economy during the next four years, Brussels may not be foremost on their minds.