Why is Angela Merkel on the way out as German Chancellor?
“I will not be seeking any political post after my term ends,” Germany’s Angela Merkel told a news conference in Berlin today. She will not seek re-election as head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at the party convention in December, a post she has held for eighteen years, and will step down as Chancellor when her scheduled term ends in 2021.
Allies insist that she will serve out the term as Chancellor, although Mrs Merkel had maintained for many years that the leadership of her party and her country were indivisible.
Merkel said she took “full responsibility” for a poor showing by her ruling coalition in a regional election in the state of Hesse, but personal authority has appeared to be on the wane for some time after a summer of infighting with the CDU’s Bavarian counterparts, the centre-right Christian Social Union (CSU), over her handling of the migrant crisis, and several high-profile gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in regional elections in the former East Germany.
What were the results in Hesse?
The Chancellor’s CDU won 30.7 percent of the vote (down from 38.3 percent at the last election in 2013) in prosperous Hesse, home to Frankfurt, Germany’s largest financial centre. Her coalition partners, the centre-left SPD, lost a third of their vote share, winning 19.8 percent compared with 30.7 percent in 2013.
The Greens, led by Hesse’s deputy premier Tarek Al-Wazir, won 19.8 percent of the vote, nearly doubling their 2013 result. “Hesse has never been so green,” Al-Wazir said after Sunday’s result, hailing the party’s best ever performance in the region.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) more than tripled its vote share, winning 13.1 percent, while the pro-business Free Democrats finished with 7.5 percent, and the far-left Die Linke party won 6.3 percent, both up from 2013.
The incumbent CDU-Green coalition retains its majority, if only by one seat, and state premier Volker Bouffier, ally of Merkel, has confirmed he will seek to retain power. They could look to team up with the classical liberal Free Democrats, but their leader Christian Lindner said last year that it was “better not to govern than govern badly”.
Who will replace Merkel as party leader?
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate and Merkel loyalist, currently the party’s general secretary, is favourite to win. Known as AKK, she ran the state of Saarland from 2011 to 2018.
Friedrich Merz has already announced his candidacy. If he wins, Merkel’s position as Chancellor would become increasingly unstable – he is an old enemy of Merkel’s from his time as leader of the CDU’s parliamentary group in the early years of her premiership.
Outside bets include Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, who has criticised Merkel’s open doors migrant policy, but is seen as an small-state liberal, and Ralph Brinkhaus, leader of the CDU group in the Bundestag, who comes from the more socially conservative wing of the party.
What are the broader implications for Europe?
The announcement signals the end of an era in European politics. It was a time during which a reunified Germany came to be seen as Europe’s leading nation, rather than France. When Merkel came to power in 2005, Jacques Chirac was French President, and she outlasted two more in Nicholas Sarkozy and then François Hollande.
She oversaw a sustained period of growth for Germany, and her gradualist, pragmatic creed led to sustained electoral success. But her record is marked by her share of responsibility for the failures of European policy-making after the crash of 2008: the imposition of ruinous austerity programmes on the Mediterranean South; and a failure to manage the migration crisis. It is not inconceivable that eventually these failures may lead to the collapse or transformation of the European Union project.