Coincidence underscores lessons too easily overlooked in the Nov. 19 collapse of government-forming discussions in Germany.
While insurgent populism hampered efforts in Berlin to assemble a governing coalition, elites at climate discussions in Bonn planned how to make people pay more for energy.
More than timing connects these developments.
Ultraright populists upset German politics in elections Sept. 24 when the Alternative for Germany Party won 92 of 709 seats in Bundestag, the parliament.
That put the Alternatives importantly in third place.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and Bavarian partner Christian Social Union led with 246 seats but lost ground. And the Social Democratic Party, with which the CDU/CSU had been in coalition, suffered its worst showing in years and bolted into opposition. It won 153 seats.
Merkel tried to form a coalition with the free-market Free Democratic Party and environmentalist Green Party.
After 4 weeks, the Free Democrats withdrew, leaving Merkel to drop hints about an early election. That option is subject to approval by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who wants coalition discussions to resume.
The Social Democrats theoretically could reenter the coalition with the CDU/CSU but seem unlikely to do so with Merkel still in charge. And reformation of the “grand coalition” would leave the first ultraright group since World War II to hold seats in the Bundestag as the dominant opposition party.
Dissatisfaction with Merkel’s liberality on immigration explains some of Germany’s populist turn.
But right behind that issue on a ranking of arguments in the coalition talks, international broadcaster Deutsche Welle places climate protection.
Thanks to generous support for renewable energy and the shut-down of nuclear plants, Germans pay the second-highest rates in Europe for electricity.
So it’s partly because Greens want to shut coal-fired plants while Free Democrats want to prevent further energy hardship that the once indominable Merkel cannot form a government.
It’s a political crisis grounded in the practical concerns of everyday Germans, culminating as the rich and powerful yet again saved Planet Earth.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Nov. 22, 2017; author’s e-mail: [email protected])