Germany to back ‘United States of Europe’ under new coalition

Country’s first female foreign minister expected to push for EU parliament’s powers to be expanded

GERMANY is poised to press for a “United States of Europe” after Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party was named foreign minister in the incoming government.

Ms Baerbock, a noted Europhile, will preside over foreign policy in Olaf Scholz’s government, which has already called for EU treaties to be rewritten to turn the bloc into a federal state.

The coalition agreement unveiled this week calls for the European parliament to be given real power and a federal foreign minister to represent the bloc on the world stage.

“A strong German foreign policy can only be a European one,” Ms Baerbock said yesterday, hours after her role was confirmed.

Mr Scholz is expected to be sworn in as chancellor in a little over a week after securing a deal to head postwar Germany’s first three-party coalition.

The EU reforms his government is seeking would need unanimous support from member states – something it will struggle to get in the current climate.

But the new approach from Berlin will be welcomed by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, who has long pressed for such reforms and done little to hide his frustration at Angela Merkel’s reluctance to embrace them.

The first woman to serve as German foreign minister, Ms Baerbock was Green candidate for chancellor in September’s German elections.

During the campaign, she said that if she won, her first foreign trip as leader would be to Brussels.

The Greens have long been the most pro-eu party in German politics and will now take control of Europe policy.

But their federalist approach appears to have the full backing of Mr Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP). “Germany needs to send a signal in which direction the German government would like to develop this European Union,” Udo Bullmann, the SPD’S Europe negotiator in the coalition talks, told Spiegel magazine.

“We want to take courageous steps towards integration because we know that time is short.”

Mr Scholz has previously described the EU’S coronavirus recovery fund as the bloc’s “Hamilton moment” – a reference to Alexander Hamilton, the American founding father who set up the US central bank and a federal treasury to take on the states’ debts.

But the coalition deal stops short of embracing further shared EU debt – something which has long been a taboo in German politics and a stumbling block to further integration.

The FDP in particular is wary of signing up to anything it sees as German taxpayers taking on more profligate member states’ debts.

Christian Lindner, the FDP leader, has been named as finance minister in the new government and is likely to veto any such moves.

The coalition deal calls for a much tougher line with member states that ignore EU laws or European court rulings, such as Hungary and Poland.

Specifically, it calls for the European Commission to withhold funds, including coronavirus relief.

But Ms Baerbock held out an olive branch to Poland in an interview with Spiegel yesterday.

“Warsaw, Berlin and Paris are crucial for Europe. And even if we have many controversial issues with the Polish government, one thing is clear: we need close cooperation with our eastern European partners,” she said.

Ms Baerbock, a known hardliner on Russia and China, has been an outspoken opponent of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the past.

But she dodged questions on the issue yesterday, in a sign she may have to be more circumspect in coalition with Mr Scholz, who supports the pipeline.