The Daily - Germany, and Europe, After Merkel

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

After 16 years in power, Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, is walking out of office one of the most popular politicians in the country.In those years, Ms. Merkel has not only served as the leader of Germany, but also as a leader of Europe, facing down huge challenges — such as the eurozone and the refugee crises — all while providing a sense of stability.As Germans head to the polls this weekend, the question is: who can lead Germany and Europe at a time when the world faces no fewer crises?Guest: Katrin Bennhold, the Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: The race to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years in office is the tightest in years. But the two leading candidates are anything but exciting, and that’s how Germans like it.Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat who is modeling himself as the candidate of continuity, has a fair shot at being Germany’s next chancellor.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. This weekend, Germans head to the polls to elect a new chancellor and to answer the question of what Germany and the rest of Europe should look like after 16 years of Angela Merkel. I spoke with my colleague, Berlin Bureau Chief Katrin Benholdt. It's Friday, September 24th. It's Friday, September 24th. Katrin, describe what exactly is at stake in this weekend's election in Germany. This is an incredibly unusual election.

We've had the same chancellor for 16 years, Angela Merkel, who's basically been not just the leader of Germany, but also the leader of Europe. And in this time, she's guided Germany and the continent through all these crises, one after another, and given people kind of this feeling of stability throughout. And so, yeah, in many ways it feels not just the future of Germany is at stake here, but actually the future of Europe as well. Well, so given that, what is the defining question in the campaign to replace her?

I mean, the incredible thing is that after 16 years in power, she's walking out of office as the most popular politician in the country. Germans are pretty contented with the way that things have been under Angela Merkel. And a lot of people are feeling anxious about this change at the helm, which has given them the stability. And so they're looking at the people who are trying to replace her with that in mind. In a way, the question becomes, who can do what she did for us in the last 16 years, in the years to come?

Well, let's talk about what she has done and what exactly, after 16 years, Merkelism looks like in Germany. So what is the story of Angela Merkel? So Merkel grew up behind the Iron Curtain in the former communist east of Germany. But her father was a Lutheran pastor. And in that sense, she grew up in a very different household from the majority of households in the communist East. You know, religion was something that was tolerated, but really not appreciated under communism. So she was sort of used to living in a household that was different from others. And there was some degree of freedom in terms of political debate at home, but she was very aware that outside of her home, dissent was not acceptable. And so

when she described this time to a German newspaper later, she said, for 35 years, I experienced the official opinion as different from my own. I was alone with my opinion or shared it with very few people. She said, that's why it does not bother me when others see things differently. So what she's saying is that growing up in a communist society where she couldn't express herself, she became comfortable with the idea that she could harbor strong views of her own, even if they were at odds with the official line. To me, it's almost like she grew up in a situation where her own views and values were at odds with the regime. And it forced her to kind of understand where her values lied.

It sharpened her sense of what is right and what is wrong. And that moral clarity is something that we see over and over again when she's a leader later on. Tell me what you mean. When do we start to see her moral clarity when she enters politics in Germany? So Merkel pretty much enters politics right after the Berlin Wall falls. And she rises through the ranks of the Christian Democratic Party, which is the center-right party in Germany. And she becomes the protege of the most powerful man in Germany at the time, Helmut Kohl, the chancellor.

And she becomes known as Kohl's girl and lands a number of ministerial posts, you know, is pretty successful throughout the 1990s. But then towards the end of the decade, it emerges that the party had these secret accounts where campaign donations would be collected, and there was absolutely no accounting. And the only person that seemed to know what this was all about was Helmut Kohl himself. person that seemed to know what this was all about was Helmut Kohl himself. It was a huge scandal. And so Merkel, two days before Christmas in 1999,

wrote this bombshell letter to a newspaper in which she publicly asked her party to oust Kohl. Her mentor. Her mentor, the man who had basically turned her into what she was. And it was kind of the first time when there was not just moral clarity, but there was also a clear political ambition that came into view here. And you know, that ambition ultimately takes her to the height of German politics. Herr Präsident, ich nehme die Wahl an. Liebe. takes her to the height of German politics. When in 2005 she becomes the first woman and the first Easterner to become chancellor.

Firstly, I feel good. Secondly, I think a great deal of work lies ahead of us. And that's really when you begin to see her ability to do things that are potentially unpopular, but that feel right to her. That you see that play out, particularly in these two crucial moments of crisis that define her time in office. And what are those crucial moments? that define her time in office. And what are those crucial moments? So the first big crisis that hit in her chancellorship was basically... The French and German leaders are meeting in Paris,

trying yet again to contain the debt crisis that's threatening the Eurozone. The European debt crisis, which came from the sort of aftermath of the Lehman Brothers' collapse in the United States, the financial crisis that swept across the Atlantic, infected financial systems, and eventually led several southern European countries to kind of the verge of bankruptcy. And Greece was the main one. The big fear is that if Greece can't raise the money to finance its deficit, then other countries that use the euro could be dragged down too.

There was a point at which it looked like it had to leave the eurozone. The eurozone badly needs fixing, and Germany has been the main country applying the sticking plaster. And Merkel, as the leader of the biggest economy in Europe, and in the eurozone, which shares this common currency, is in a situation where she basically has to decide, do we cut this country loose effectively by not bailing them out or do we help? And it was politically a very difficult situation because Germans at home weren't in any mood to subsidize Greeks who were seen as having not been very disciplined. At the same time, Merkel knew that if the euro fails, the whole European project was basically at risk. And so it was in 2010 that she uttered this famous sentence when she said,

Denn scheitert der Euro, dann scheitert Europa. Scheitert der Euro, dann scheitert Europa. If the euro fails, Europe fails. And that was the moment when she basically committed. She would save Greece and she would save the eurozone. But the bailout that she helped mastermind at the time came with a lot of strings attached. And there were a lot of austerity measures that had to be swallowed by

these Southern European countries like Greece. And they were experienced very negatively because these austerity measures were incredibly painful. And so what did we learn about Merkel from this crisis? I think what you see there is that when she knows what she thinks the right thing to do is, she will do it. And she will do it even if it's unpopular. And this bailout was unpopular on both sides of the fence. But she stood firm because in her mind, the priority was to save Europe. So what is the second big crisis? Europe is continuing to struggle with the flood of migrants from war-torn countries pouring into Europe by land and sea.

So in 2015, suddenly the numbers of asylum seekers start building up in Europe. You can see the tents lined up right here behind me, and inside them, Syrian refugees escaping war. You've got the war in Syria, you've got problems in Afghanistan. 80% of refugees now in Europe are from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. And a sort of combination of crises lead to this massive exodus of people from the Middle East then joined by various other groups from North Africa.

Tens of thousands of refugees running for their lives to Europe. And it ends up in this sort of pivotal moment in the summer of 2015, at which tens of thousands of people were literally trying to enter Europe every day. For the last couple of weeks there has been a refugee crisis on this island, Lesbos, with 20,000 refugees effectively trapped here and unable to get out. And you had these images at the time of just masses of people in limbo, not being able to move, and in appalling conditions too. We need help, we need a dress, we need food. And the question that was asked at the time was, you know, who would take these people in?

And, you know, in the midst of this chaos, Angela Merkel basically stood up in front of her country and said, We can do this. We will manage. And she placed this crisis in the context of the great arc of post-war German history. She said, you know, we've done great things before. We've managed other challenges. You know, we rebuilt after World War II. We reunified East and West.

We can do this too. World War II. We reunified East and West. We can do this too. And I remember the day that she pretty much gave the go-ahead. I was at the train station in Munich, watching these trains of refugees roll in, the Syrians step out, and Germans lining those platforms, clapping as they arrived, handing soft toys to children and welcoming these refugees to Germany. You know, this is the country that committed the Holocaust. It's the country with the ugly past that did the right thing. And it was a moment of pride, really, for a country that hadn't really been allowed to be proud up to that point. And in total, that year and the next, Germany would take in over a million refugees. Wow.

So it was this really important moment in sort of German post-war history. But it also prompted a huge backlash. And it meant that for the first time since World War II, a far-right party actually made it into the German parliament. You know, that party was on a roll. There was a sense at one point that Angela Merkel, you know, might actually have to end her career early. But it wasn't the case. And in the end, here she is, you know, the most popular politician in the country. And if you think about it, she kind of showed that you don't have to be a martyr. You don't have to be voted out of office when you've done the right thing.

And that's really why this election on Sunday matters so much. Because the question is, who will fill that huge vacuum she leaves? The question is, who will fill that huge vacuum she leaves? Who can be a leader of Germany, the leader of Europe, at a time when the world certainly faces no fewer crises? We'll be right back. So Katrin, let's talk about the candidates seeking to replace Merkel and how they do or don't relate to her, given just how large she looms right now. So there are basically three people who'd like to become the new chancellor. Two guys who kind of lean into Merkel and one woman who's more leaning away.

And the thing to know is that, you know, Germany is not a presidential system. You don't really vote for people. You vote for parties. The number of votes that goes to a party determines the share of seats in parliament that party gets. It's parliament who votes for the new chancellor. Got it. So who is the first of these three candidates? What do we need to know? So the first guy is this guy called Armin Laschet. He's from Merkel's own party, the Christian Democrats. And he's this guy who sort of was considered to be kind of a safe pair of hands in her own party. He's a longtime Merkel ally.

He supported her during the migrant crisis. He's also the governor of Germany's biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. So he's somebody who's considered to have governing experience. But above all, he was the guy among the candidates they chose from who kind of seemed to look most like Merkel.

Nothing too conspicuous, fairly calm, the candidate of continuity. But during the campaign, he made a bunch of blunders and the worst moment came in a bunch of blunders. And the worst moment came in the aftermath of those terrible floods. If you recall, we had this torrential rain in southwestern Germany over the summer that led to these terrible floods that killed over 180 people. And in the aftermath, at an event where some of these victims were commemorated.

Laschet was caught on camera in the background, giggling. And it seemed so inappropriate, and it was something that certainly Merkel would never have been caught doing, that, you know, he just started free-falling in the polls. In many ways, this election was his to lose. And that's exactly what he's doing right now. Okay, so who is the second of these candidates? So for the first time, the Green Party in Germany also nominated a candidate. The Green Party is the sort of progressive party of environmentalists with climate change really at the heart of their agenda. They'd never designated a candidate before because they never really seemed to have a chance.

But this time, because they consistently proved to be the second most popular party in the country for the last two years, they decided to give it a go. And they designated a young woman. Thank you very much. 40 years old, Annalena Baerbock. young woman, 40 years old, Annalena Baerbock, who has positioned herself clearly as the kind of agent of change in this election. She has a very sort of bold program of huge investments to transition the German economy to a carbon neutral economy within the next couple of decades and is very engaged in this race as the person who says we're not going to do everything that Merkel did we're going to do things differently because this country needs change

that's kind of her pitch in our country there is so much more let's open a new chapter let's do it together thank you In our country there is so much more. Let's open a new chapter. Let's do it together. Thank you very much. So she is the candidate offering herself up as a departure from 16 years of Merkel. Totally. And you know, there was a moment when she was first nominated by her party in April. The media just went crazy.

I mean, she was on every cover of every magazine, in every newspaper, and she shot up in the polls. There was a brief moment when she actually led the polls, and people thought, oh my God, this could be the next chancellor. We could have the second woman chancellor following the first, a 40-year-old woman. But then she started to make a bunch of mistakes. There was a plagiarism scandal that broke. She hastily produced this book, and there were bits that were not attributed correctly, and she got slammed for it in the press. There were accusations that she was padding her resume because she hadn't accurately labeled some of the sections.

And to some people, some of the stuff may not seem like such a big deal. I mean, certainly not enough of a big deal to kind of end a campaign. But if you combine it with the fact that, you know, she's a very young candidate, she's only 40, and she has no track record of governing anywhere, then it becomes more serious because it sort of undermines trust in her because there's nothing else really to judge her by. And when those floods hit that I mentioned, the floods that brought her flagship issue,

the flagship issue of the Greens, climate change, really to the center of this election campaign, she was sort of unable to benefit from it. campaign, she was sort of unable to benefit from it. So almost at the same time, during those floods, this third candidate kind of starts to manifest himself and rise in the polls. And who is that? Thank you. Thank you for the kind introduction. So his name is Olaf Scholz. He's a social democrat, which is traditionally the opposition party to Merkel's party. But he's also been Merkel's finance minister for the last four years.

The interesting thing about Scholz is that he's considered to be incredibly boring. I do not have to stress the importance of international cooperation and strong international institutions. He even kind of has a nickname. They call him the Scholz-O-Mat, which is pretty much, you know, the Scholz machine, because he's sort of robotically on message all the time. The future does not belong to those who deny reality and isolate themselves. The future belongs to those who take action together. But it's been a strategy that in this election

has been phenomenally successful. He's said very little initially and basically let his rivals stumble. Meanwhile, he just kind of tried to be the force of calm and pretty much hinting, although it hasn't always been super subtle, that he's going to be the force of calm and pretty much hinting, although it hasn't always been super subtle, that he's going to be just like Merkel. And how does he hint at that?

So, you know, sometimes it's really not subtle. Merkel has this way of holding her hands when she's photographed in this kind of diamond-shaped way. It's such a thing after 16 years that we have a name for it in German. She's doing the Raute, which is kind of the rhombus. It's a geometric shape.

And Scholz has been photographed doing just that. I mean, tongue-in-cheek, no doubt, but it seems to be working. On one campaign poster, he even used the feminine form of chancellor in his campaign. You know, er kann kanzler, he can be chancellor, but using the feminine form, which is a clear, you know, reference to Merkel. He seems to be the one that is communicating the most convincingly to voters that if you vote for Olaf Scholz, what you're getting

is Angela II. Hmm. And is that working? Yes, it's working. You know, his party was pretty much counted out of the race altogether. It was kind of, you know, lingering at 14%, way behind the Greens and Merkel's party. But, you know, as the other candidates blundered,

Scholz just kind of quietly sat there, made no mistakes, and he's now become the frontrunner in this race. So people think he is at the moment looking like the likeliest successor to Merkel. Katrin, it occurs to me that all the similarities that you've described so far between Merkel and Schultz are more about message than necessarily policy. But when it comes to policy, because you said they're from two opposing parties, is there reason to believe that Schultz will actually govern in the same way that Merkel has? You know, that really is the million-dollar question here. And the honest answer is we don't know yet. a million dollar question here. And the honest answer is we don't know yet. And a lot will depend on what party he will cut a deal with after the election to actually form a government.

But it's true. He belongs to a party that is definitely to the left of Merkel's party. His campaign promises include things like wanting to raise the minimum wage, wanting to raise taxes on the richest people in society. There's a bunch of things that really does set his program apart from Merkel's party's program. At the same time, he served as her finance minister. He's known to be a fiscal conservative. He says as much himself. He believes in a balanced budget, this sort of famous German obsession with a fiscal conservative. He says as much himself. He believes in a balanced budget,

this sort of famous, you know, German obsession with a balanced budget. So there are also a lot of people who say, you know, there's not that much space between them. And in the eyes of a lot of voters, that's not a bad thing. Hmm. It's very intriguing that the frontrunner is someone who so openly attempts to tether himself to Merkel, because 16 years is a really long time for someone to be in power and for a country to want, essentially, more of the same. essentially more of the same. Germans had it really good. These 16 years under Angela Merkel have been kind of in golden era for Germany. You know, when she came in, unemployment stood at 12%. You know, Germany was considered to be the sick man of Europe. Things weren't great. It was kind of in the doldrums. There had been a bunch of labor market reforms that her predecessor undertook. And she sort of benefited from that because pretty much as soon as she took over, the economy took off. And we've pretty much been

on a run ever since. And despite the pandemic, unemployment remains now at kind of near record lows, around 4%. And despite all these crises that have meant upheaval, you know, big problems in other parts of Europe, Germans haven't felt it because Merkel has sort of given them that stability, economic stability, but also the sense more broadly that the country was kind of on track. And so that's why most people here say, change? I don't know. You know, I'm quite happy the way things are. But it's interesting.

At the same time, of course, after these floods, after all these big demanding challenges that people are well aware of, there's also kind of this undercurrent of anxiety that I hinted at before. And so I think there's a sense that change is probably coming, but Germans would much rather not have too much of it. Well, Katrin, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Now that Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine has been approved as a booster shot,

a federal advisory panel issued detailed recommendations on Thursday for who should receive the third dose. The panel recommended it for people 65 and older, those 50 to 64 who have underlying medical conditions, and residents of nursing homes. And on Thursday, New York became the first city in the nation to require improved labor conditions for food delivery workers employed by popular apps like Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats, all of whom have been accused of mistreating and underpaying their workers. Legislation passed by the city council would establish a minimum pay for the workers, require the apps to disclose their tipping policies, and bar them from charging workers for basic supplies like insulated food bags. Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug, Caitlin Roberts,

Daniel Guimet, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Michael Simon Johnson, and Claire Tennesketter. It was edited by Anita Bonagio, contains original music by Chelsea Daniel, Dan Powell, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. The Daily is made by Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke Vanderplug, MJ Davis-Lynn, Austin Mitchell, Nina Potok, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guimet, Robert Jimison, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Asa Chaturvedi, Caitlin Roberts, Rochelle Banja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Schumann, Theo Balcom, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sophia Milan, Des Ibequa, Erica Futterman, Wendy Doerr, Elizabeth Davis-Moore, and Maddie Macielo. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.