[ad_1]
Press play to listen to this article
Voiced by artificial intelligence.
 |
By Matthew Karnitschnig
with Hans von der Burchard
Send tips here | | Subscribe for free | View in your browser
MERZ’S DENTAL ISSUES
This won’t hurt a bit: Gotta hand it to CDU leader Friedrich Merz. Not every opposition leader could manage to squander the historic weakness of an incumbent government by committing one pointless gaffe after another.
Pulling teeth: Merz’s latest misstep involved medical care for migrants, who he claimed “sit at the doctor’s office and have their dental work done while the German citizens next door can’t even get an appointment.” He was trying to make a larger point about the so-called “pull factor,” i.e. the relatively generous social welfare benefits in Germany that some argue provide an incentive for migrants to seek asylum in the country.
Tooth fairy: Trouble is, asylum seekers don’t have access to generous dental benefits as Merz claimed and only receive the kind of care he described in an emergency. Indeed almost nothing Merz said about the migrants during a TV-debate where he made the comments is rooted in fact.
Root canal: By veering from the realm of factual reality, Merz once again opened himself up to mockery and derision from all sides, reigniting doubts about his suitability for the chancellery.
Drilling down: The bigger question here is what the hell the Christian Democrats’ leader is trying to achieve. For weeks, he’s been sending mixed signals about whether and under what circumstances the party could/would work or cooperate with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). While Merz repeatedly insists that his party’s so-called firewall to the right remains intact, his actions and rhetoric often suggest otherwise. The dental-care comment, which was straight out of the AfD’s rhetorical arsenal, is just the latest example.
Bottom line: Merz’s personal approval rating is just 27 percent, tying him with Scholz, the leader of one of the most unpopular coalitions in German history. Despite the public’s dismay with the government, support of the CDU has stagnated at under 30 percent. If the Christian Democrats want to retake the chancellery in 2025, they may have to ditch Merz.
Tell it to the judge: Merz’s populist tirade could land him in court after Left party official Daphne Weber filed a criminal complaint against him alleging Volksverhetzung, or inciting racial hatred. “By promoting hatred against a group of people, he’s endangering public peace,” she wrote.
MIGRATORY GREENS
Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and her Greens were forced to buckle (once again) on the hot-button issue of migration this week after the party’s concerns over new European asylum rules threatened to hold up a broader agreement on the EU’s migration deal. That’s what the Greens would like you to believe anyway.
Fake news: Anyone following this saga from the inside knew the Greens would ultimately back down. Given that Germany is among the countries struggling most to cope with the latest migrant influx — and because the issue is dominating the political debate and fueling the far right — the Greens were never going to block an EU deal.
But to keep the peace with the Greens’ ideological base — which finds many of the proposed controls on asylum objectionable — Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had to make it appear that she and her colleagues were going down kicking and screaming. Mission accomplished.
Kommandant Scholz? Several German media reported that Chancellor Scholz had to issue a Machtwort (“command”) during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday to persuade Baerbock to give in. Knowing Scholz, whose mild-mannered demeanor has earned him the nickname “smiling Buddha,” the reality was likely less dramatic. Two government officials told Berlin Bulletin that Scholz appealed to his ministers’ common sense. Maybe. All he really needed to do was to show them the latest polls.
Italian job: Even though Germany was ultimately willing to accept a compromise on the EU asylum deal, another blockade emerged during a meeting of EU interior ministers late Thursday. This time, it was the Italians who could no longer accept the deal.
Schadenfreude: Scholz and his team should have spent more time getting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on board for a compromise deal instead of “leaking their spin to the German press,” one German official told Berlin Bulletin.
GERMANY’S SECOND ACTS
IT PAYS TO BE WRONG?
Hungry like the Wolfowitz: Some years back in New York, we were sitting at The Pierre having breakfast (as one does), when Paul Wolfowitz, one of the neocon masterminds behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq, sat down at the next table. Despite his high-flying career as a senior diplomat and president of the World Bank, Wolfowitz complained to his companion that he was having trouble finding something new to do because no one wanted to have anything to do with him anymore. The stain of the disastrous Iraq war stuck to him like a scarlet letter, recalling the adage that there are no second acts in American lives.
Fast forward to Berlin, 2023… In the German capital, failures like this aren’t a career killer, they’re a badge of honor. As anyone who has climbed the greasy poll of German politics can attest, the bigger the fuck-up, the better.
Take Lars-Hendrik Röller. Not exactly a household name, but from 2011 to 2021 Röller served in a key position as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief economic adviser, presiding over such genius moves as the government’s support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project (which left Germany totally dependent on Russian gas) and Germany’s aggressive courtship of Beijing, which left the country’s business sector completely dependent on China.
Out of the shadows: Röller returned from obscurity this week as chairman of the “Berlin Global Dialogue,” a two-day forum at a Berlin business school, where he instills a new generation with the principles of Merkelnomics.
A man’s gotta make a living: He also has a side gig as an adviser for BlackRock, the American investment giant.
Michel, ma belle: One might be tempted to dismiss the “Berlin Global Dialogue” as just another wheezefest populated by old white men in bad-fitting suits. And yes, Olaf Scholz was there. But so was European Council President Charles Michel, the Belgian prime minister whose name no one remembers, and seemingly half the German cabinet. Other A-list guests included BlackRock CEO Larry Fink (Röller’s new boss), ArcelorMittal Chairman Lakshmi Mittal, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, the CEOs of Mercedes and Deutsche Telekom, and the presidents of Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan.
Money for nothing: The roster of sponsors was no less impressive: Bank of America, Google, McKinsey & Co., and ArcelorMittal, to name but a few.
And just to be clear for the cynical among you, the Berlin Global Dialogue has nothing to do with money. It says so in bold letters in one of the press statements. They are “uniting global leaders to shape a world in transition.” So there.
Angela’s ashes: If nothing else, the lineup shows that for all of his missteps in the decade he spent giving Merkel bad advice, Röller still has juice. Or as he put it in an interview with Berlin’s Tagesspiegel this week: “There’s a life after the chancellery.”
Titanic vibes: Given Röller’s unfortunate legacy, one might expect him to be plagued by self-doubt. But by the sounds of it, he has no trouble sleeping at night.
Who knew? “From today’s perspective our energy policy is viewed critically,” he told Tagesspiegel. “But from our perspective at the time, we were pursuing a clear strategy.” He added: “I certainly could not have imagined that Vladimir Putin would use gas as a weapon.”
How could he have known? Just because Putin had already invaded and occupied Crimea, fomented a separatist war in Donbas and shot down an airliner killing 298 people including 80 children? Get real!
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
We raise this issue not (only) to pick on Lars-Hendrik, but to point out that he is far from an exception. The other architects of Germany’s disastrous Russia policy under Merkel have also graduated to bigger and better things. Many others populate Germany’s deep state in the chancellery and foreign office. Here’s a partial list:
Sigmar Gabriel, Merkel’s vice chancellor, economy minister, foreign minister and erstwhile booster of all things Nord Stream.
His current job: chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke, a transatlantic business lobby. He also serves on several corporate boards, including those of Siemens Energy and Deutsche Bank.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier: As Merkel’s foreign minister from 2013 to 2017, he pursued the quixotic “dialogue” strategy with Moscow and authored the controversial Steinmeier Formula, which would have cemented Russia’s influence in Ukraine.
His current job: German president.
Christoph Heusgen: Best known for grinning at Donald Trump at the UN as the then-president warned that Germany was making itself too dependent on Russian gas with Nord Stream 2, Heusgen was Merkel’s longtime chief foreign policy adviser. Defending Merkel’s Russia strategy a few months before Moscow’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, he said the chancellor “always considered what was acceptable for Russia.”
His new job: Chief of the Munich Security Conference, the annual trade fair of the military industrial complex sponsored by the German government.
Andreas Michaelis: Steinmeier’s right-hand man when he was foreign minister, Michaelis coordinated policy towards Russia and Ukraine from 2015. He went on to serve as state secretary in the foreign office, the most powerful position after the minister. Known within the German government for his deep skepticism towards America, Michaelis fought hard against U.S. attempts to convince Berlin to drop Nord Stream, saying in 2019: “I don’t want European energy policy to be determined by Washington.”
His new job: German ambassador to Washington.
Stephan Steinlein: Another Steinmeier man, Steinlien served as one of his deputies in the foreign ministry, where he was considered one of the key architects of Germany’s Russia policy. Asked in an interview last year if Germany had underestimated Russian imperialism and should have listened to its Eastern European allies, he responded: “Short answer, yes.”
His new job: German ambassador to France
Olaf Scholz: As Merkel’s vice chancellor and finance minister from 2017 to 2021, Scholz supported Merkel every step of the way on Russia and fought tooth and nail for Nord Stream 2, insisting that the “the argument that Germany will become dependent is not accurate.”
His current job: German chancellor
IN OTHER NEWS
SCHOLZ WARNS AGAINST PROTECTIONISM IN CHINA CAR PROBE: Scholz sounded a lot like his predecessor Angela Merkel at a panel discussion in Berlin on Thursday: Asked about the EU’s probe into potentially illegal subsidies for Chinese electric vehicles, the chancellor called for open trade and no “protectionism” toward China, as if the problem of alleged unfair subsidies didn’t exist. More here.
BORDER CHECKS: Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic are establishing a joint task force to crack down on “inhumane smuggling crime,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced on Friday. The news comes days after Germany announced it will impose spot checks along its borders with Poland and the Czech Republic in an attempt to stem the influx of asylum seekers entering from those countries.
THE WEEK AHEAD
TAG DER DEUTSCHEN EINHEIT: Germany celebrates its reunification with a national holiday on Tuesday, with Scholz and several ministers attending a special ceremony in Hamburg.
GRANADA CALLING: Scholz is heading to the picturesque Andalusian town on Thursday for a European Political Community Summit involving the EU and neighboring countries like the U.K. and Ukraine. One agenda item will be the prospect of enlarging the EU to include Ukraine.
On Friday, the second day of the summit, EU leaders will hold an unofficial summit to discuss defense and the internal reforms that would need to happen before the bloc could take in any additional member countries.
STATE ELECTION SHOWDOWN: The states of Bavaria and Hesse head to the polls on Sunday. Exit poll results will be announced at 6 pm.
SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | POLITICO Confidential | Sunday Crunch | EU Influence | London Influence | Digital Bridge | China Watcher | Berlin Bulletin | D.C. Playbook | D.C. Influence | Global Insider | All our POLITICO Pro policy morning newsletters
[ad_2]
Source link