Denis MacShane / Apr 2025
Photo: Shutterstock
The coalition agreement between Germany’s new ruling parties the conservative CDU under Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the social democratic SPD who will elect a new Leader at a party conference in June has now been published.
The key decision to abolish the debt-brake law - the Free Democratic Party’s block on any spending to renew the Germany economy - after the disastrous heritage of the Merkel years and the massive economic disruption of Covid was taken by the Bundestag last month.
The Free Democrats whose policy boosted the vote of the hard-right racist AfD are now longer represented in the Bundestag and may have exited German political history.
On key issues of European politics, the new policy pact for the next four years represents a major break with the Schröder-Merkel two decades of German government 1998-2021.
It ends a tolerant liberal approach on immigrants. Borders will be closed and passports checked.
The new German government had already pledged 3 billion Euros and at a meeting of 50 defence ministers in Brussels, led the way in pledging 21 bn Euros in new military support for Ukraine just after the coalition agreement was revealed. (The UK’s contribution was £450 million.
Nonetheless the proclamation by Chancellor Merz soon after his election win that Germany would increase defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP (Sir Keir Starmer was only willing to go to 2.5 per cent of GDP) does not appear in the CDU-SPD coalition agreement.
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Director of the German Council on Foreign Policy, says he is worried that the firm commitment to 3.5 per cent of German GDP going to defence is not there in black and white in the formal Coalition written agreement , presumably struck out by the SPD with its strong Nie Weider Krieg (No More War) tradition and history.
On the Middle East “Israel’s security is a German raison d’être,” proclaims the agreement. It puts German at odds with the current anti-Netanyahu sentiment in European politics and the decisions of Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognise a Palestinian state. President Macron in Egypt this week had said France is considering recognising a Palestinian state as long as all Arab states open diplomatic relations with Israel.
Much as in Britain, overseas aid will be based on what it adds to an undefinined national German interest and the there will be a new North-South Commission to update the pioneering work of the legendary Brandt Commission 1977-1980.
Willy Brandt argued that unless the Global South could join in the Global North’s economic wealth through trade the citizens of the Global South would seek to end their poverty by migrating to Europe, North America and richer nations.
Brandt was prescient. However his conclusion announced in 1980 on the eve of the Thatcher-Reagan era of profit and private wealth maximisation and the attacks on the social market economy by de-unionising and ending manufacturing industries failed to find wide government support with consequences seen today as a result of mass people movement in a flight from poverty and autocracy in many African, Asian, Arab, and Latin American states.
Asylum seekers will no longer be allowed automatically to bring in families. Ukrainian refugees will no longer get the same welfare benefits as German citizens but a lower rate for asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.
New arrivals will have to wait twice as long for naturalisation to become German citizens. Deportations will be handled at a federal level, not as today a task for regional (Land) governments.
The CDU with its harder line Bavarian CSU party within a party wanted an even tougher line on immigration which the SPD watered down - but not too much as the SDP saw its working class votes move massively to the AfD in the February election. The AfD got 20.8 per cent as the SPD vote slumped to 16.4 per cent, its lowest vote since 1950.
Germany’s governments of so-called PutinVersteher (Putin Understanders i.e. Kremlin apologists) ) under Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel are history. But many in Germany want to become XiVersteher ( Xi Apologists). The coalition agreement proposes to update Germany’s China policy – already the softest amongst EU member states.
This is export led with $6,345 billion worth of German exports to China im December 2024. The UK, by comparison, exports $2.67 bn mainly consisiting of services to China each month.
The coalition agreement calls for more majority decisions (QMV) by the EU. This is aimed as Hungary or Slovakia and pro-Putin backsliders. Turning this into effective EU policy is another question.
Now we will see how much of this government programme can become implementable as policy and laws. The combined vote of the green, AfD, and hard left parties came to 25 per cent though only the AfD and Die Linke (the Left) parties have seats in the Bundestag.
The CDU and SPD has 328 seats out of the 630 strong Bundestag. It is a very narrow margin for effective government.
As elsewhere in Europe and North America, politics is melting down and the CDU-SPD coalition agreement may not be much of a guide to where the German. Government will in 12 months’ time.
Much depends on the new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. At 69 how much time does he have?
