COMMENT
Everyone loves Germany’s Greens (for now)
The party is flying high in the polls and beloved by
the media, but not all of its policies will likely prove popular.
BY MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG
April 30,
2021 4:06 am
BERLIN —
Germany’s Greens are riding high, but are they for real?
Just a week
after choosing their candidate for chancellor — party co-leader Annalena
Baerbock — the Greens’ poll numbers are on fire. In some surveys, the party has
even supplanted the Christian Democrats, the center-right bloc that has
governed Germany under Angela Merkel for the past 16 years.
If the
Greens can sustain that momentum until election day in September, they will
likely lead the next government — a political earthquake that would reverberate
across the Continent.
Yet all
honeymoons end, sometimes in tears. Why, many ask, should Germans’ infatuation
with the Greens be any different? The stock Green response is that their
success isn’t a fluke.
“Our strength
isn’t ephemeral, we’ve built it over months and years,” said Franziska
Brantner, a senior Green MP and Baerbock confidante who focuses on European
affairs.
While that
may sound like a hollow boast, it isn’t.
A reminder
of just how successful the Greens’ long game has been came Thursday when
Germany’s highest court threw out the government’s 2019 environmental law for
not being ambitious enough. The case was brought by a coalition of
environmental groups endorsed by the Greens.
The court’s
sweeping ruling — which will effectively force the government to rewrite its
environmental code — would be considered an audacious attempt to legislate from
the bench in many countries; in Germany, the decision was cheered, even by
members of government responsible for the original law.
The ruling
was not just “epoch-making,” but “great and significant,” tweeted Economy
Minister Peter Altmaier, a Merkel ally. Altmaier then tussled with Finance
Minister Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, over which government coalition
partner was to blame for the shoddy legislation that the court declared
“unconstitutional.”
The
decision illustrates just how mainstream Green ideas have become and why the
party that has warned against the perils of climate change for decades has
become such a political force.
And yet,
while there’s no question that the Greens have captured the zeitgeist with
their core mission, a number of their other priorities remain well outside the
political mainstream.
For any
German who has supported Merkel’s centrist course, the Greens’ new “Manifesto
of Principles,” passed at a convention in November, will make for interesting
reading. In other parties, such documents are often dismissed as little more
than a catalog of empty promises. But the Green base is different — it expects
party leaders to deliver.
The
manifesto calls, among other things, for “a Germany free of nuclear weapons and
thus a swift end to nuclear participation.” Translation: the U.S. needs to get
its nukes out of Germany.
Though
Baerbock subsequently made clear she doesn’t expect that to happen overnight,
the goal itself is controversial because it would require removing the
foundation of the security umbrella that has protected Germany for decades. The
120-page manifesto makes no mention of the United States, the country generally
seen as the guarantor of German defense, but it does mention NATO, which it
describes as in “deep crisis.”
The
solution to NATO’s problems is not, in the Greens’ view, for Germany to meet
its obligations to the alliance by fulfilling a pledge that all members have
made to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. Instead, they favor a “European”
solution.
“We’re not
in favor of national goals when it comes to European defense,” Brantner said.
“It’s an inherent contradiction to say we want a European security policy and
then for everyone to do something on a national basis. That makes no sense.”
Instead, Brantner
said Germany should follow France’s lead in pursuing President Emmanuel
Macron’s vision for “European sovereignty.”
“NATO is
not the priority,” she added.
Defense
policy isn’t the only issue on which the Greens are going against the grain.
On the
politically dicey issue of migration, the party doesn’t just want to end the
tough asylum policies implemented by Germany’s current government; it wants
rich countries like Germany that have contributed to climate change to
compensate poorer countries that are suffering the effects of it, including by
easing outward migration.
“States
that historically and currently emit the majority of climate-damaging gases
must participate in a global compensation of climate impacts, damages and
losses as well as in the creation of safe and dignified migration routes,” the
party program says.
As for the
EU’s refugee deal with Turkey (under which Ankara agreed to take in millions of
refugees in return for billions of euros), the Greens aren’t fans.
“The
possibility of fleeing and seeking protection in Germany and Europe must not be
made more difficult through cooperation with third countries, and cooperation
must not lead to human rights violations,” the manifesto states.
The Greens’
migration policies may be noble in spirit, but it’s far from clear whether they
are politically viable in a country where recent battles over migration have
redrawn the political landscape, spawning one of the Continent’s most virulent
far-right parties.
So far,
tough questions about how the Greens plan to put their ambitious program into
action have been largely missing from the public debate.
That’s
mainly because the German press has been too busy praising them.
In the days
after the Greens gave Baerbock the nod for the chancellor run, she was
seemingly everywhere, on magazine covers, on talkshows and the nightly news.
While that
was to be expected, the gauzy tone of the coverage wasn’t.
“Finally
something different,” Der Stern declared in green letters under a cover photo
of Baerbock in a black leather jacket. “One feels her excitement,” the weekly
told readers. The generally more critical Der Spiegel pictured Baerbock, hands
on her hips, under the headline “The woman for all contingencies.”
The apex of
Baerbock-mania came during her first television interview after her nomination.
At the end of the live discussion, the two journalists who peppered her with
softball questions for 45 minutes were so excited that they did something one
usually only sees on talent shows: They broke into applause.
Some of the
enthusiasm for the Greens might be driven by exasperation with the center right
over its shambolic process to elect a candidate for the chancellor race. That
would explain the Greens’ sudden surge in the polls.
Whatever
the cause, the German media’s love affair with the Greens is bound to wane as
the campaign progresses. Political popularity inevitably triggers scrutiny.
When it arrives,
Baerbock will have to prove her substance runs deeper than a glossy magazine
cover.
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