38 Thursday November 25 2021 | the times
Wo r l d
gration, designed to turn Germany into
a “modern country of immigration”.
This will include speeding up visas
for foreigners and permitting them to
acquire German passports after living
in the country for five years or three if
they have made “special achievements
in integration”. Migrants will no longer
have to renounce other nationalities.
The parties promise to deport moreOlaf Scholz has secured his place as the
next chancellor of Germany with a
coalition deal that heralds some of the
most socially liberal policies the
country has seen in decades.
Under the slogan “dare more
progress”, his government plans to
loosen immigration rules and legalise
the sale of recreational cannabis. It will
allow people to change gender without
seeking medical approval and permit
foreign residents to take German citi-
zenship without having to give up their
other passports.
It aims to build 400,000 affordable
homes a year, including 100,000 social
housing units, and to borrow “unprece-
dented” sums to drive the decarbonisa-
tion and modernisation of industry.
The end of the coal industry will be
brought forward from 2038 to 2030.
The coalition has committed to gener-
ating 80 per cent of the electricity from
renewable sources by 2030 through ex-
pansion of wind farms and solar panels.
The sale of new petrol and diesel vehi-
cles will be banned early next decade.
“No industrial nation will make
greater efforts to protect the climate,”
Christian Lindner, 42, who will take
over from Scholz as finance minister,
said. Scholz, 63, said that his foreign
policy would revolve around “our
friendship with France, our partnership
with the US and standing up for peace
and prosperity in the world”.
He said that Germany’s role on the
international stage would be as a
guardian of multilateralism in a “multi-
polar” world of conflicting powers.
“We are united by our belief
in progress and that politics
can achieve something good,”
Scholz said. “We are united by
the will to make the country
better, to advance it and to hold
it together.” He is expected to be
sworn in as chancellor early
next month after two months of
negotiations. His centre-left
Social Democrats (SPD) agreed
an alliance yesterday with the
Green party and the economi-
cally liberal Free Democrats
(FDP). Germany has not been
governed by a three-party coali-
tion since the early 1950s.
The trio bridge an ideological
spectrum that stretches from the
pacifist left to the Thatcherite
right. Their coalition is known as the
“traffic light” because of their red, green
and yellow colours.
At its core are commitments to “un-
chaining” public and private invest-
ment, improving the state’s record on
digitisation, speeding up the shift
towards carbon neutrality and achiev-
ing what Norbert Walter-Borjans, 69,
an SPD leader, described as a “new era
in social policy”.
The coalition agreement promises a
“paradigm shift” in migration and inte-
Angela Merkel accepts a bouquet
from Olaf Scholz, the next chancellorGermany must dare
to be more liberal,
says new chancellor
criminal migrants and reduce “irregu-
lar” immigration. They also vow to
abolish mass holding centres for
refugees and reform the European
Union’s asylum system by forming a
“coalition of the willing” with other
member states prepared to accept
refugee quotas. “We want to support
and promote the readiness to take in
[asylum seekers] in Germany and the
EU,” the document says.
The 40-year-old rules on changing
gender, under which transgender
people until 2011 were forced to get sur-
gically sterilised, will be scrapped.
People can now go to a register office
and confirm their change of gender.
The ban on the sale of cannabis for
recreational use will be lifted, making it
available through licensed premises. A
legal clause that prevents abortion clin-
ics from providing online information
will be dropped.
The coalition also wants to reduce
the voting age from 18 to 16, although it
is unclear whether they can obtain the
required two-thirds majority in the
Bundestag. Lindner, the FDP leader,
said: “We stand for a liberalisation of
social policy. Diversity, individuality:
that is what binds us together.”
Annalena Baerbock, 40, the joint
head of the Green party, will become
foreign minister. Robert Habeck, 52, the
other Green leader, will head an eco-
nomics and climate “super-ministry”.
On foreign policy, allies say Scholz is
likely to stick broadly with Angela
Merkel’s non-confrontational
approach to Russia and China, which it
described as a “partner, competitor and
systemic rival”. It aims to maintain
“substantial and stable rela-
tions” with President Putin
while condemning his aggres-
sion in Ukraine and his involve-
ment in the Belarus border
crisis. It also pledged to keep US
nuclear bombs on German soil
as a deterrent, despite strenu-
ous objections from several
leading figures in the SPD.
Scholz’s accession marks the
end of a long chapter in
Germany’s postwar history.
Merkel, 67, has been in power
for 16 years and her Christian
Democratic Union must now
reinvent itself.
His first days in office will
be challenging. The fourth
wave of the pandemic is in full
flow and inflation is expected to rise
this month to almost 6 per cent, the
highest since the early 1970s.
The partners failed to agree, how-
ever, on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipe-
lines, the Nato target to spend 2 per cent
of GDP on defence or the sums the gov-
ernment intends to borrow.
The plans will not be confirmed until
December 5 after approval by the
Greens’ 125,000 members as well as the
SPD and FDP party conferences.
A disparate coalition that has much
to do, leading article, page 37Islanders torch their
Germany
Oliver Moody Berlin
Police have fired tear gas and water
cannon at hundreds of demonstrators
in the Solomon Islands who torched
parts of the parliament and attacked
Chinese-owned shops in protest
against strengthening ties with Beijing.
Residents of the tiny Pacific state fled
as more than 1,000 protesters, most
from the large pro-Taiwanese Malaita
province, descended on the capital,
Honiara, demanding the resignation of
Manasseh Sogavare, the pro-Beijing
prime minister.
Schools and businesses closed and a
curfew was imposed in the capital,
where 84,000 people live. “A lot of Ho-
niara residents were caught by surprise
with what has happened,” Georgina
Kekea, a journalist on the islands, told
Radio New Zealand. “It has really dis-
rupted operations... and now people
are not feeling safe anymore.”
Kekea said it was likely that “theworst is yet to come”, with more expect-
ed to join the protests.
Videos on social media showed build-
ings on fire and police firing tear gas at
looters. Smoke and flames were seen
rising from the parliament grounds.
In 2019 the government ended 36
years of diplomatic ties with Taiwan
after China offered large financial in-
ducements to the islands, including
construction of a national stadium in
Honiara. China has since built a large
embassy in the centre of the capital.
However, many in Malaita, the Solo-
mons’ largest province, including Dan-
iel Suidani, the province’s premier, who
claims that he rejected bribes to
support cutting ties with Taiwan, re-
main opposed to closer ties with China.
Suidani has maintained ties with Tai-
wan, which has been providing aid to
the province during the coronavirus
pandemic, angering both the country’s
government and Beijing.
The Solomon Islands Herald reported
that protesters looted and damagedSolomon Islands
Bernard LaganIce runway
opens up
Antarctica
to tourists
M
aking out
the runway
in the
wilderness
of white was the
biggest test for the
first pilot to land an
Airbus A340 on
Antarctica (Jane
Flanagan writes).
At a mile thick, the
10,000ft ice runway— carved with
grooves to provide
traction — could
easily withstand the
fully laden wide-body
passenger jet.
In addition to the
extreme temperature
that played havoc
with the altimeters,
the glare caused
problems for the
captain.
“The reflection is
tremendous,” Carlos
Mirpuri said. “Proper
eyewear helps you
adjust between the
outside view and the
instrumentation.
“The blending ofthe runway and the
terrain... makes
height judgment
challenging.”
Fortunately the
touchdown was
“uneventful” after a
2,800-mile journey
over five and a half
hours from Cape
Town, South Africa.
The achievement was
greeted with a round
of applause.
“We were joyful,
after all we were
writing history,”
Mirpuri, who works
for the aviation
company Hi Fly, said
of the flight thisProfile
O
laf Scholz has, one of
his closest friends
says, spent his life
preparing for the
chancellorship
(Oliver Moody writes). Over
more than two decades, the long-
haired youth who once
demanded the overthrow of
capitalism has been transformed
into the cautious steward of
Europe’s largest economy.
Scholz, 63, has been a Social
Democratic MP; the state
minister in charge of Hamburg’s
police apparatus; his party’s
general secretary; the federal
labour minister and, finally,
federal minister of finance since- “No German chancellor in
the postwar period has come into
office with so much experience
behind him,” an ally said.
Scholz is at heart a solid
technocratic pragmatist on a
mission to stake out the centre
ground. His election campaign
was built around the need to
re-establish “respect” and social
cohesion through taking better
care of the poorly paid, and
the need for industrial
modernisation in the face of
climate change and Asia’s rise.
However, his first months will
largely be reactive: curbing the
fourth wave, reining in inflation
and bedding in the three-party
alliance. His record suggests he is
equal to the task.
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flowadiCaptain Carlos Mirpuri landed the Airbus A340 on the icy Wolf’s Fang runway in