Germany’s new government holds great promise

NO ONE LIKES waiting for a traffic light. But for Germans the wait is over. On November 24th a new ruling coalition was unveiled. Forming it took only two months after an election. (In the Netherlands parties are still haggling after eight.) Nicknamed “traffic light” after the colours of the parties that will make it up, it is a three-way contraption, Germany’s first since the 1950s, with the Social Democrats in the lead backed up by the Greens and the Free Democrats. But whether the incoming chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will offer dynamic leadership, rather than more of Germany’s recent drift, is hard to say.

We choose to be optimistic. The entry into the government of the world’s fourth-largest economy by the mainly pragmatic Greens is good news at a time of environmental peril. The devil is in the detail, and there is a lot of it already; the coalition deal comes in the form of a 177-page document laying out its pre-agreed policies. On climate change, these include a pledge to end the burning of coal for electric power by 2030 (eight years earlier than had previously been planned) and to raise the share of renewables to 80% by 2030, from a previous goal of 65%. There is also welcome attention to the nuts and bolts of how all these commitments will actually be achieved.

More than that, it is now reasonable to expect that Germany, whose new foreign minister is set to be Annalena Baerbock, one of the Greens’ co-leaders, will push much harder than before for the EU to do more to fight climate change, and for the EU’s weight as the world’s second-largest consumer market to be used to urge others on. Germany cannot routinely get its own way in the EU, of course; but it is still the most influential member of the club. Likewise, Europe does not always prevail. But its commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, though it binds no one else, has become a global standard that others are under increasing pressure to meet.

The carbon news is therefore good, and other parts of the package are as well. NATO allies may fret that Germany now plans to attend the first meeting of signatories to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. But it will be as an observer only and, more important, the new government will continue with “nuclear sharing”: the positioning of American nukes on German soil and Germany’s commitment to maintain aircraft to drop them if need be. (A failure to commit itself firmly to NATO’s defence-spending target of 2% GDP is a bigger, but hardly new, worry.) Other pluses include measures to reform Germany’s creaking bureaucracy and a vow to legalise cannabis. A tougher line against Russia and especially China is also on the cards.

There are trickier elements. The expected appointment of Christian Lindner, leader of the Free Democrats, as finance minister suggests that ditching Germany’s outmoded debt brake or loosening the EU’s purse strings beyond its €750bn ($840bn) covid-recovery package is unlikely; Mr Lindner has been an opponent of both. Still, none of this looked likely to change much, whoever got the job. Mr Scholz is thrifty, like most German voters, and Germany belongs to a group of frugal northern EU countries. Even so, the deal contains signs of flexibility here, too. And Mr Lindner’s involvement could well be a plus. He is strongly pro-business, and his presence will reassure conservatives if such flexibility is employed.

Perhaps the biggest worry about the new coalition is that it may spend too much of its time arguing. On many issues, Mr Scholz can expect his liberal partners to pull in one direction, and his Green partners in another. The laboriously hashed-out plan provides a baseline of agreement, but there will always be things it failed to foresee, or simply ducked. Covid-19 is again raging in Germany (see Leader) and Vladimir Putin is a menace. But the methodical and disciplined way the three parties have worked through their differences gives reason to hope that they will be able to go on doing so. Viel Glück! ■