Germany’s knife-edge slide into boredom

Date: 17/09/1998

Predicting the outcome of next weekend's German election is far from easy as small shifts in voting patterns could make all the difference. But whoever wins, the country's EU policy is unlikely to change. Thomas Klau reports

A FEW lovers of Berlin might disagree, but as a general rule, the only people to perceive Germany as an exciting place are those who still fear it.

Indeed, there are times in the country's national life when its inhabitants themselves seem to be bored, and the current campaign for the national elections on 27 September is clearly one of them.

While voters, according to opinion polls, still seem determined to get rid of a party coalition and a chancellor who between them have governed Germany for a record 16 years, the strong prospect of a change of government in Bonn has failed to generate visible excitement.

The pervading ennui has infected even the media, who have given up attempts to squeeze sexy headlines out of an electoral battle which has technically entered its hot phase.

The responsibility for this sorry state of affairs lies entirely, of course, with the politicians themselves.

After more than a decade and a half in power, Christian Democrat Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his allies have understandably found it impossible and indeed unnecessary to give the public anything but a message of weiter so - more of the same.

Oddly enough, his dynamic challenger Gerhard Schröder, the Social Democrat minister-president of the northern state of Lower Saxony, has apparently reached the same conclusion.

Although journalists and political opponents alike relentlessly press him to unveil his political intentions, the telegenic, ever-smiling Schröder is stubbornly hiding behind a smokescreen of vapidity. After so many years in opposition, the SPD leadership is desperate to get back into power, and its analysis that voters want new faces rather than new policies has led it to fight a campaign which has strenuously avoided any specific promises of profound change.

The vagueness of Schröder's public utterances has allowed his followers to pledge to repeal the few substantial tax and welfare reforms the government has managed to push through, while acknowledging the nostrum that Germany's generous welfare state and cumbersome regulatory environment both need a degree of overhaul.

In a campaign which has been about appearance rather than substance, Schröder has managed to build up and retain an action-man image of a modern, hands-on politician without revealing exactly where his actions would take him.

This policy undoubtedly suits a leader who, in a long political career, has been all things to all men and never shied away from blatant inconsistencies.

And while many voters are certainly growing impatient with the Social Democrats' refusal to come clean, the yearning for a new face in the chancellery is such that a change of government seems a near certainty.

The obfuscation of issues and the boredom of voters - a deep and frustrated apathy which is perhaps Kohl's greatest enemy - is undoubtedly aggravated by the fact that is it enormously difficult to predict the outcome of next weekend's poll.

With three small parties (Greens, Liberals and ex-Communists) vying for a share of the vote with two big ones (Christian and Social Democrats), the election result and the make-up of the future majority will probably hang on tiny shifts in the electoral pattern.

Should the Greens fail to make the 5% threshold for winning seats in parliament or the ex-Communists fare exceptionally well in the eastern part of the country, the SPD would almost certainly be forced into a grand coalition with the Christian Democrats. This would be a politically deadening outcome, but one which the more conservative members of the party leadership and quite a few voters would strongly relish.

Conversely, a slightly stronger showing by the Greens, made less likely by an early series of forthright policy announcements which were immediately attacked as gigantic electoral blunders, would probably hand power to a red-green alliance which would bring the clearest break with the policies of the past.

The outcome of last weekend's Bavarian regional election, which confirmed the CDU's sister party's hold on power, failed to give a clear signal of how voters would behave in the federal poll.

The numerous possible combinations (even a continuation of the present government should not be totally ruled out) make it hard to predict the election's effect on Germany's European and other policies.

On the face of it, the country's basic political orientations will remain very much unchanged whatever the make-up of the German cabinet six or seven weeks from now. Although Schröder has repeatedly flirted with EMU-sceptic positions in recent years and is no passionate European, the certainty of the single currency's launch in 1999 and the strong pro-European traditions of Germany's Social Democrats ensure that an SPD-led government would continue to build on foundations Kohl and his predecessors have laid.

Egged on by their leader Joschka Fischer, one of the few stars in Germany's dull political scene and possibly the country's next foreign minister, even the Greens, despite their anti-capitalist and pacifist nostalgia, have dropped their earlier reluctance to embrace Europe's existing political and security architecture.

Indeed, Fischer's European policy rhetoric and analysis is almost identical to Kohl's, with both men sharing an unusual and deeply held belief that while western Europe may have buried the demon of war, the devil is still alive under the marble slab.

On a number of issues, ranging from environmental protection to fiscal matters and economic policy coordination, the SPD and the Greens both advocate more rather than less European integration, moving on policy lines closer to those of France's left-wing government than to the ruling German coalition.

The real impact of a change of leadership in Bonn on the business of Europe would stem less from a change in the country's policies than from the departure of Kohl, the man who during the past ten years of his office has become the Chief Executive Officer of European politics.

However fast the SPD leader embraced European affairs - and Germany's forthcoming EU presidency in the first half of 1999 would leave him little choice but to do so - Kohl's political and personal weight at EU summits would and could not be duplicated by a Chancellor Schröder, at least in the early years.

For the first time in two and a half decades, Europe would find itself bereft of a leader with strong European convictions and a clear sense of direction, for neither France's volcanic and inconsistent President Jacques Chirac nor the UK's risk-averse Tony Blair seem to have the appetite or the ability to take on the job.

However, now that the single currency has been all but launched, ardent EU enthusiasts still find grounds for hope. They believe that the momentum generated by the Union's growing integration could be strong enough to overcome any difficulties emerging from a lack of decisive leadership from its largest member.

Indeed, the pending move of Germany's government from Bonn to Berlin should facilitate rather than endanger a European process whose biggest foreseeable challenge in the next two decades will be the political and economic integration of eastern Europe.

With only six chancellors in the 53 years since the end of the Second World War, Germany - despite the major and ongoing impact of its reunification - has undoubtedly mutated into one of the more predictable countries of Europe.

Boring it may be, but none of its neighbours will be heard complaining.

Features on the European impact of Germany's general election, 27.9.98. Further references on election in European Access, No.6, December 1998.