A pyrrhic victory for Merkel in Germany
Her CD U managed to win, but not without yielding ground to the ultra right wing
Germany’s Angela Merkel has scored a historic but pyrrhic victory during this weekend’s German elections. Her Christian Democratic party once again emerged as the largest vote taker and this all but guarantees that she is set to serve four consecutive terms, only the second German chancellor to do so. But the results were severely diminishing for her and her party.To put it another way, nearly half the generally stolid and dependable German electorate plumped for one of the smaller fringe parties.
The chancellor has moved her government to the political centre during the past several years with policies that included banning nuclear power and allowing one million refugees from Syria to enter the country. Whatever the merits of these and other policies, the net result has been to see about one million votes switch from her party to the ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany. Another consequence of her policies was to leave the Social Democrats without any political identity. There was no noticeable policy difference between Merkel and the Social Democratic rival in the elections.
The shrinking of Germany’s political centre parallels similar trends in Europe. The hope had been that after anti-immigrant parties suffered setbacks in the Netherlands and France that Europe had seen off the worst of the ultra rightwing. Germany’s elections are not evidence that this has begun to turn around. But they do indicate that it is too soon to assume the tide has turned definitely. Europe’s guard must remain high.The other question is whether a weakened Merkel will continue to be the great helmsman of the European Union. If Emmanuel Macron, her counterpart in France, is able to fulfil even some of his racial reform agenda, leadership in Europe will probably shift towards France and its more centralised vision of Brussels. The Merkel era is hardly over, but it is now entering its twilight years.