Olaf Scholz clearly entered 2024 through the wrong door. His ratings are at rock bottom, the government is unable to cope with the crisis in the country, strikes by farmers and machinists are paralyzing the economy, the opposition is calling for early elections and his comrades are whispering that it is time to resign.
Honestly, things couldn’t be worse for the Chancellor. But more recently she has embodied Germans’ hopes for “a long period of Merkel.” The entire SPD election campaign in 2021 (Social Democratic Party of Germany. – socialbites.ca) Building on parallels between Scholz and the outgoing Chancellor (From German. your kanzUsed to refer to a woman as chancellor. – “socialbites.ca”). The politician himself formed the image of an ideal successor: he was not as boring and charismatic as Merkel, he copied her firm but measured management style and promised to faithfully continue the chancellors’ initiatives.
The extraordinary ordinariness of “Mr. Merkel,” as Scholz was called at the time, won Germans’ admiration. However, practice has shown that this alone is not enough to repeat the success of its predecessor.
Merkel’s secret was her ability to negotiate with completely different political forces. The quiet and indecisive bureaucrat Scholz was deprived of this quality, although it was very useful to him.
The Chancellor’s real problem was his own government. Since the SPD could not gain a majority in the Bundestag in 2021, it had to form a cabinet together with the left-wing Greens and the right-wing liberals of the Free Democratic Party. (FDP). In other words, the result was an intermingling of parties with opposing ideologies and views on the country’s most important issues.
Only a strong and authoritarian chancellor can bring the partners, each pulling the blanket over themselves, to a common ground. But under Scholz’s leadership, the government’s work began to look like an adaptation of the ever-repeated fairy tale “The Swan, the Crayfish and the Crane.”
All this took place in a context where Germany was in dire need of economic restructuring. Due to the energy crisis and high electricity prices, German industrialists are moving production abroad. There are disruptions in railway transportation due to the deterioration of infrastructure in the country. The military is hopelessly outdated due to decades of underfunding. Moreover, Scholz has undertaken a large-scale project to transition to green energy.
It was not clear how the coalition, which was falling apart at the seams, would solve such important problems. He did not decide – the partners stumbled upon the question of where to get the money for all this. The SPD and the Greens flatly refused to cut social spending. And the FDP did not want to raise taxes and revise the “debt brake” rule adopted under Merkel, which greatly limits the state’s ability to take out loans.
Even an attempt to switch Germany to “green” heating almost ended in disaster for the ruling coalition. The initiative sparked a violent conflict between the Greens and the FDP that lasted six months. Ordinary Germans were also unhappy with the prospect of abandoning cheap gas and fuel in favor of expensive “green” systems. So they went to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, and the heating issue became a symbol of chaos in the government.
It seemed like things couldn’t get any worse. However, at the end of 2023, Scholz faced another challenge from the Constitutional Court. On November 15, he declared that the decision to divert €60 billion of unused loans from the Covid fund to environmental projects was illegal. The money was withdrawn from the treasury, leaving a multibillion-dollar hole with nothing to plug.
It took Scholz’s coalition a month to reach a temporary compromise. But even here there were consequences. The decision to save on subsidies and tax breaks for the agricultural sector caused mass protests from farmers. Turmoil began again within the coalition: the Greens criticized the FDP for attacks on farmers, and the Liberals voted within the party to leave the government (but this failed). Ratings of coalition allies dropped due to endless squabbles.
The total support of the three parties no longer exceeds 33 percent; This matches the support of the CDU/CSU opposition bloc. (Includes the parties “Christian Democratic Union of Germany” and “Christian Social Union of Bavaria” – “socialbites.ca”). Scholz’s personal rating dropped so much that he received the “proud” title of the most unpopular head of government in history.
The current consensus in Germany is that Scholz must leave to resolve the crisis. The opposition, ordinary voters and even members of the chancellor’s party are in favor. Scholz has not yet bowed to external pressure. Its fate will therefore depend on how long the coalition partners can agree with each other.
Of course, whoever replaces Scholz is unlikely to return Germany to the calm Merkel era. But this is probably not necessary. It may turn out that Scholz’s problem was not just a failure to copy his predecessor. Maybe the old ways of governing don’t work in the new political reality. This means it’s time for Germany to try something different.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.