Germany’s election. Time for a change

On September 18th Germans should vote for the opposition candidate, Angela Merkel

GENERAL elections around much of Europe tend to be boring. Often the government they lead to is a product as much of backroom deals as of the voting. The German election campaign has duly been dull, and coalition manoeuvring has already begun; but the vote's importance to Germany's future, and Germany's importance to the European Union's future, have lent some spice to the affair.

The centre-left government that took office under Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in 1998, and was re-elected in 2002, has not been a success. Its most urgent task was to reform Europe's biggest economy. Yet growth has been slower in Germany than in any other EU country. Unemployment is close to 5m, way over the 3.5m target that Mr Schroder asked to be judged by in 1998. He has brought in some reforms, but he started most of them too late; and his reforms were watered down by opponents in his Social Democratic Party (SPD) and by the opposition's grip on the upper house, or Bundesrat.

Mr Schroder's foreign policy has been even more of a mixed bag. In Kosovo, he lifted a taboo by sending German troops into combat for the first time since 1945. But by campaigning hard in 2002 against war in Iraq, he poisoned Germany's relationship with America. He has been too forgiving of Vladimir Putin's shift to autocracy in Russia. As for the EU, after a promising start he allied himself too tightly to France's Jacques Chirac, opposing economic and budgetary reform.

Given this record, it is perhaps surprising that the leader of the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU), Angela Merkel, is not further ahead. Instead, her lead has been shrinking. Part of her problem is that Mr Schroder is an inspiring and persuasive campaigner, where she is pedestrian. But she is also suffering because, even though voters are dissatisfied, they are fearful of radical change. Many have been turned off by Ms Merkel's choice of Paul Kirchhof, who advocates such measures as a flat tax, as her potential finance minister.

In truth, Mr Kirchhof's radicalism puts off many in the CDU as well as in the SPD. So the real problem with a Chancellor Merkel is that she may not be radical enough. Thanks partly to the reforms that Mr Schroder began, the German economy is well-placed to rebound - so long as the reforms are continued and enlarged. But the CDU and, even more, its Christian Social Union sister party are in many ways social democrats by another name. The only avowed liberals are the Free Democrats (FDP), Ms Merkel's preferred coalition partner, and even they tend to be more liberal in theory than in practice.

Even so, a Chancellor Merkel at the head of a coalition with the FDP would have two big advantages. In foreign policy, she would be more Atlanticist, more critical of Russia and less closely tied to France within the EU. And in domestic policy, she would benefit hugely from her party's control of most German states, and thus of the Bundesrat.

That is also the objection to a “grand coalition” between the CDU and the SPD, a prospect that looms closer as the gap between the two main parties narrows. Many Germans like the notion of both parties getting together to tackle the country's problems. Yet in practice a grand coalition, led by a Chancellor Merkel weakened by her failure to win a majority, with an embittered SPD many of whose members believe that reforms cost them the election, would be unlikely to produce much in the way of change. For Germany's sake, and for the sake of reform right across the EU, voters should do their best to give Ms Merkel's Christian Democrats and their allies a clear majority on September 18th.

Editorial argues that the German electorate should vote for the CDU and Angela Merkel.