EU vote humiliates Scholz’s German coalition
European Parliament election rout renews questions
about whether Berlin government will survive.
JUNE 10,
2024 1:40 AM CET
BY MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG AND NETTE NÖSTLINGER
BERLIN —
Germany’s ruling coalition suffered a crushing blow in the European Parliament
election on Sunday, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats recording
their worst result in a national vote in more than a century.
The
left-leaning coalition’s steep losses — support for the Greens fell by nearly
half — will likely renew questions over the government’s stability. The
alliance, a three-way partnership that includes the Social Democrats, Greens
and Free Democrats, has struggled to find answers to an array of acute problems
facing the country, from a stagnant economy to the deep dysfunction of its
asylum system.
Though
regular elections aren’t due until the fall of 2025, persistent infighting
within the alliance over everything from Russia’s war on Ukraine to the budget
has fueled speculation that the government could collapse well before then.
The
center-right Christian Democrats were the clear victors on Sunday, winning 30.2
percent of the vote according to a projection for German public television.
The
extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) also put in a strong showing,
finishing second with 16 percent, a gain of 5 percentage points compared to the
2019 EU election. The party has capitalized on growing concerns in the country
over a huge influx of asylum seekers in the past decade.
Meanwhile,
Scholz’s Social Democrats garnered less than 14 percent, an extraordinary
decline for a party that has long been a pillar of Germany’s political
landscape. In 2019, the party won just 15.8 percent, which at the time was also
considered a disastrous result.
The latest
loss is a particular humiliation for Scholz, who, despite his dismal approval
ratings, insisted that he should be the face of the campaign alongside the
party’s lead candidate for the Europe race, Katarina Barley.
“It’s
pretty clear we didn’t get any tailwind” from Berlin, Barley said after polls
closed Sunday, calling the result “bitter.”
Finger-pointing
aside, the real question is whether Scholz’s government will survive. German
coalitions rarely collapse before the end of a term, but this one is atypical
because it includes three parties instead of the customary two, which makes it
more volatile.
What’s
more, given the magnitude of the coalition’s slide in voters’ estimation —
Sunday’s result suggests only about 30 percent of Germans still support the
alliance — some argue the government has lost its legitimacy.
Similar
concerns prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to call a new parliamentary
election following his withering defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National
Rally party in Sunday’s poll.
Nonetheless,
all three German parties worry that pulling the plug on the power-sharing
government would just worsen their predicament.
The latest loss is a particular humiliation for
Scholz, who, despite his dismal approval ratings, insisted that he should be
the face of the campaign alongside the party’s lead candidate for the Europe
race, Katarina Barley. |
That’s
particularly true of the smallest of the three coalition members, the liberal
conservative Free Democratic Party, who have bristled at the tax-and-spend
instincts of their partners. Party leader Christian Lindner, who is also
finance minister, has been at odds with Green leaders for months over the
government’s spending priorities.
And yet,
with the party winning just 5 percent of the vote on Sunday, the party’s
survival is in question. If it were to fall below 5 percent in the next
Bundestag election, for example, the party would be shut out.
If Sunday’s
projections are confirmed in the final results, it will be seen as a big
success for the AfD, which has been beset by scandals in recent months.
The party’s
top two candidates for the EU election were implicated in a series of
sensational allegations of misconduct involving suspected espionage and
potential Russian influence. Most recently, the party’s lead candidate,
Maximilian Krah, was forced to stop campaigning after he defended members of
Hitler’s Waffen-SS as not “automatically” criminals.
The Greens
are projected to finish with 11.9 percent, an 8.6 percentage point drop in
support compared to the 2019 European election, making the party the biggest
loser of the election.
Germany’s
new populist party, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which combines left-wing
economic policies with right-wing cultural views, arrived on the political
landscape with a projected result of 6.1 percent. The party was founded by
Sahra Wagenknecht, the longtime face of The Left party, which has been in
crisis since her departure and was projected to end up with 2.7 percent.
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