50 Europe The EconomistNovember 30th 2019
N
o one evergot rich betting against Angela Merkel. Germany’s
chancellor has outlasted every prediction of her premature
demise. She has survived domestic and international crises galore.
Having won four elections on the trot, she is now on her fourth
French president, her fifth British prime minister and her seventh
(and counting) Italian prime minister. As she enters her 15th year
in office, she remains one of Germany’s most popular politicians.
Yet, as an eccentric German saying has it: everything has an
end; only a sausage has two. Mrs Merkel’s vow to stand down by au-
tumn 2021, when Germany’s next election is due, has created a
power vacuum that was apparent last weekend in Leipzig, at the
annual conference of Mrs Merkel’s centre-right Christian Demo-
cratic Union (cdu). The chancellor was a distant presence, spend-
ing most of the event glued to her phone while early skirmishes in
the war to succeed her played out. Suggestions that Friedrich Merz,
a favourite of the party’s conservative wing, might launch a coup
against Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced her mentor
Mrs Merkel as cduleader a year ago, turned out to be so much
hype. Mr Merz declared his fealty, and Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer will
fight another day. But reckoning averted is merely reckoning de-
layed, for Germany is now in the grip of post-Merkel syndrome.
This era, which may run all the way to the next election, will be
characterised by uncertainty, rancour and a Germany even more
inward-looking than usual. Every utterance that spills from a ma-
jor politician’s lips will be parsed for what it means for the “k-ques-
tion”—who will the cduchoose as its Kanzler (chancellor) candi-
date in a year’s time? Germany’s coalition, a partnership of the cdu
plus its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (csu), and
the Social Democrats (spd), will get bogged down in trivial rows as
politicians jostle to position themselves as Mrs Merkel’s rightful
heir. Voters will grow frustrated, as will Germany’s partners; Em-
manuel Macron has already made his irritation apparent. The
chancellor is not always as absent as her detractors suggest—she
was deeply engaged in coalition talks over a recent climate pack-
age, for example, and she has big ideas for Germany’s presidency of
the euCouncil in the second half of 2020. But on matters of do-
mestic politics, she checked out some time ago.
Mrs Merkel’s long goodbye reshuffles the deck for the other bigparties, too. The success of the Greens, who briefly topped polls
earlier this year, forces that party to field endless questions over
which of its two telegenic leaders will stand as chancellor, rather
than the meaty policy matters they would prefer to discuss. A more
immediate anxiety attends the troubled spd, which on November
30th elects a new leader and a week later must decide whether or
not to quit the coalition as part of a scheduled review. If it does, an
early election could follow. That would instantly shake Germany’s
political kaleidoscope.
Yet should the coalition limp on into 2020, as most expect, the
theatre of operations will shift to the cdu. For now the party finds
itself in wary limbo. As its leader, Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer has a tar-
get on her back. Since taking over she has made a string of un-
forced errors, has struggled to get a grip on the party administra-
tion and has presided over state-election losses and a polling
slump. As a result she is now one of Germany’s least liked politi-
cians. True, she responds to pressure: her long speech in Leipzig
was good enough to see off her rivals, for now, and from her new
perch as defence secretary she has had a semi-decent stab at inject-
ing life into Germany’s moribund foreign-policy debate. Having
won the leadership fair and square, she will not leave quietly.
But the gossip in Leipzig was ominous for Ms Kramp-Karren-
bauer. Many party grandees, reportedly including Mrs Merkel, do
not think she can crawl out of the pit she has dug herself. A large
chunk of cdumembers harbour a belief—or perhaps a grudge—
that Mrs Merkel has warped the party out of recognition, sacrific-
ing conservative edge for sludgy centrism, and fear her protégée
may offer more of the same. And so enemies are circling. Beyond
Mr Merz, aspirant cduchancellor-candidates include Armin Las-
chet, the moderate premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s
most populous state; Markus Söder, leader of the csuand premier
of Bavaria, whose punchy speech in Leipzig brought the house
down; and Jens Spahn, a young firebrand who has been quietly ex-
panding his networks as Germany’s health minister. As these pre-
tenders, and perhaps others, square off they must bear two things
in mind. The cduhates the disunity of internecine squabbles—
that is what the spdis for—but it also loves winning. Which of
these tendencies prevails over the next year is likely to shape the
future of the cdu—and of Germany.Wars of the Merkel succession
There could be a fruitful path ahead. Assuming the spddoes not
deliver a shock in December the cdu, which has always prided it-
self as a big tent, could use next year to revive debates suppressed
by Mrs Merkel’s long, largely ideology-free chancellorship. There
were faint signs of this in Leipzig. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer’s com-
bative insistence that the cdumust wake up to the challenges of
disruptive technologies, from 5gnetworks to artificial intelli-
gence, was a useful jolt to a party on whose watch Germany has be-
come a digital laggard. There are also flickers of fresh thinking on
how to make Germany’s social-market economy more climate-
friendly. That will matter if, as many observers predict, the cdube-
gins coalition talks with the Greens after the next election.
Yet all this could fall apart in power struggles. Mr Laschet fears
for Germany something like the American fate, where primaries
leave candidates bruised by their own side before they can take the
fight to the opponent. When Mrs Merkel passed the mantle to Ms
Kramp-Karrenbauer last year it looked as if the chancellor would
succeed where all her predecessors had failed: in stage-managing
her own exit. Her own party may yet deny her that wish. 7Charlemagne Post-Merkel syndrome
Germany is becoming consumed by the battle to succeed the chancellor