Friedrich Merz lashes out at Greens as German election campaign starts

 

Friedrich Merz lashes out at Greens as German election campaign starts

 

Favourite to be country’s next leader rails against possible coalition partners even as he says he will restore harmony

 

Deborah Cole in Berlin

Tue 17 Dec 2024 17.22 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/17/friedrich-merz-lashes-out-at-greens-as-german-leadership-campaign-starts

 

The frontrunner to be Germany’s next leader has pledged to end the infighting that has hobbled the country’s politics in recent years, even as he railed against his most likely coalition partners.

 

The country’s main parties kicked off their campaigns on Tuesday, a day after Chancellor Olaf Scholz triggered a snap election for February with a confidence vote he deliberately lost. Presenting his Christian Union (CDU/CSU) alliance’s manifesto, the centre-right opposition chief, Friedrich Merz, vowed to German voters that he would bring back much-missed harmony.

 

“We are in a position to take back responsibility in government” for the first time since Angela Merkel left office three years ago, Merz said of the conservatives. “We plan to lead a government without fighting. We want to lead a government that is again reliable, predictable and calculable.”

 

A harder line conservative than the more moderate Merkel, Merz has benefited in the polls from a sense of perpetual crisis since Scholz took power in December 2021. Scholz’s three-way coalition, Germany’s first at the federal level, has struggled in particular to grapple with the economic and security fallout from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

 

But because he has little chance of winning an absolute majority – even if his CDU/CSU comes in first in the 23 February general election – Merz would have to seek at least one other party as a partner.

 

The CDU/CSU is on top in opinion polls with nearly 33% support, far ahead of the unpopular Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) on about 16%. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland, treated as a pariah by the mainstream parties, has about 18%, while the Greens are on about 13%. The pro-business Free Democrats and the conservative populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) are teetering on the 5% threshold to representation.

 

Mathematically and ideologically, the only two options for Merz at this stage would appear to be the Social Democrats or the Greens. But the mood music this week appeared strikingly dissonant, reaching a level of polarisation rarely seen in contemporary German politics.

 

During the ill-tempered debate in parliament before the confidence vote, Merz ripped into Scholz as a “failed leader” and “embarrassment” on the EU stage as he touted his own programme of middle-class tax cuts, stricter border controls, reduced social welfare benefits and more robust military aid for Ukraine.

 

“Fritze Merz likes to talk rubbish,” Scholz told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday, using a derogatory nickname for Friedrich. That prompted an angry response from Merz, who said he would “not abide” the chancellor’s “personal attacks”.

 

Although Merz has said he wants to leave all of his coalition options open after the election, the CDU/CSU has singled out the Greens – even more than the SPD or the far right – as its bete noire.

 

“The Greens appear to be tacking hard to the left – with what they were already doing wrong on economic policy, they apparently not only want to press on but make it worse,” Merz said on Tuesday.

 

He said this included “doubling down on high taxes, high debt and high redistribution with subsidies for the few”.

 

“If that’s the Green economic policy that Herr Habeck and others think they have to pursue and exacerbate,” Merz said, referring to the economy minister, Robert Habeck, “then the Greens are distancing themselves from any possibility of cooperation that they might have had on a few issues.”.

 

At a joint news conference with Merz presenting their alliance’s programme, the Christian Social Union leader, Markus Söder, attacked a Green proposal for a global tax on billionaires as “preachy” and condemned the party’s calls for speed limits on the autobahn and attempts to transition away from fossil fuels in home heating. Although he stopped short of renewing his vow to veto any coalition with the Greens, he accused the party of “moving away from what we consider to be the right way”.

 

The Greens’ candidate for chancellor, Habeck, warned of the toxic tone gripping German political debate, noting it was reckless to create enemies out of rivals who may need to work together after the election.

 

“Whoever wants to lead a government has to be able to bring varying interests together” and get past his own “self-importance”, Habeck said. “That will determine his future success.”