The German elections and the European Union

Lecture given in Brussels on 3 December 1998

 

The recent shift in Germany’s political landscape dramatically revealed something that had previously been eclipsed by the dominance of former chancellor Helmut Kohl, namely that politics in almost all the other EU Member States are also in the hands of leaders who are either socialists or social democrats – something of a rarity in non-coalition governments. In fact, 11 of the current 15 heads of government belong to the political left, and the present Italian prime minister is even a former Communist. Only Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland and Spain still have Christian democratic or conservative leaders. Already, nine of the 20 EU commissioners belong to social democratic or socialist parties. So is Europe ‘turning socialist’, just nine years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? In 1977 the secretary-general of the French Socialist Party, one François Mitterrand, demanded that if Europe was to exist at all, it had to be socialist.¹  Willy Brandt said much the same thing. Is this vision – wherein ‘socialism’ and ‘Europe’ are regarded as synonymous – now becoming a reality?

Just 20 years ago, the sociologist and former European commissioner, Ralf Dahrendorf, rejected such a scenario when he sounded the death knell of the ‘social democratic century’² . And he wrote this less than 20 years ago, after Margaret Thatcher became the British prime minister in 1979 and Helmut Kohl became Germany’s chancellor in 1982. Does what Dahrendorf said not merely highlight once again the inability of social scientists to make accurate forecasts?³  Even the social democrat, Peter Glotz, said back in August 1996: “There is no doubt that several Western European societies are being dominated by anti-social democratic rhetoric…”⁴  How times are changing: The 1998 elections in Germany visibly shifted the goal posts in the EU landscape. As a result, the following questions have to be asked:

– Was the election result in Germany perhaps merely a ‘blip’ in the Christian democrats’ performance, or is there a general trend – as reflected by events in Germany – suggesting comparable developments in the other Member States?

– Which major German domestic and foreign policy issues will have an impact on European policy? Which of Kohl’s policies are still valid? And what changes will the German election result bring about in EU policy?

– Finally, will Europe turn ‘socialist’, and which strategies are being pursued by the parties in the political centre, especially the Christian democrats in Germany?

The extent to which the configuration of the playing field in the EU has been altered was reflected in the meeting in Brussels on 22 November 1998 of 11 finance ministers and the spokespersons on financial affairs representing the Party of European Socialists (PSE). In the run-up to the ECOFIN Council, they published a joint paper, described themselves in a press release as the ‘PSE’s ECOFIN group’⁵ , and thereby clearly indicated that they intended to use their majority in the Council. However, even a paper of this kind was unable to prevent a European dispute over taxes from breaking out between Gerhard Schröder and Tony Blair just a few days later – a dispute which took considerable effort to quell. The way things stand at present, it is the meetings between key figures on the political left in Europe, rather than of the leaders of Christian democratic parties which appear to be important.

The first thing to be said is that there was astonishment abroad at the way in which Germany took the political handover so calmly in its stride, as if it were an everyday event. In this connection, the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted that the changing of the guard “came not with thunder and lightning, but like a pedestrian strolling out on a mild autumn day in October, with a self-evidence of the kind that one might only wish on democracy. Indeed, the reason why the change of government is a historic milestone for us all is that there is hardly any outward sign of its historical nature. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany a self-evident event is self-evident.”⁶ 

The really dramatic aspect of this “self-evident” German election result lies in the fact that 11 of the 16 minister-presidents of Germany’s Länder are now social democrats, that virtually all top government posts (chancellor, president of the Bundestag, president of the Bundesrat, president of the Federal Constitutional Court) are occupied by social democrats, and that the German President Roman Herzog will probably be replaced by a social democrat when he steps down in May. As a result, some people are also worried whether a shift towards a left-wing ‘Berlin Republic’ may be taking place.

This is not the place for extensive election analyses. However, Gerhard Schröder did not become chancellor because he promised a left-wing German republic, but rather because his masterly grasp of communications policy inspired him to occupy the middle ground (‘neue Mitte’, or ‘new centre’) on the political scene, while at the same time promising few political changes – “Wir machen nicht alles anders, aber vieles besser” (“We won’t do everything differently, but we will do many things better”) – but plenty of new faces. He raised the prospect of harmony in a ‘Great Coalition’ and kept his statements so vague that he succeeded in side-stepping major, salient points of debate. Never before had an election campaign in the Federal Republic been so ‘unpolitical’, for political platforms were forced into the background, leaving the spotlight focused on the media performance of the leading candidates. One catchy aspect of Schröder’s campaign - and not just for younger voters – was the repeatedly hammered home message that 16 years of political responsibility shouldered by a single chancellor were reason enough for a change – “Danke Helmut, 16 Jahre sind genug” (Thanks Helmut, but 16 years are enough)⁷ . Another fact that stuck in the minds of voters was that the old government failed really to get across to the electorate what they intended to set about achieving over the next four years, i.e. what their future goals were. Had it not been for German reunification in 1989-1990, the former coalition may have been stopped in its tracks much sooner. In times of dramatic change and upheaval – and it is not only Germans who “seek security”⁸ – an executive that is not only capable but also not afraid of taking action always has an edge over the opposition. What is more, there appears to be a tendency for every democratic society simply to vote out the ‘establishment’ after a certain period in power⁹ .

It is in no way my intention to gloss over the dramatic nature of the Union’s election defeat (loss of 6.4% of the vote nationwide, with support dropping to 35.1%, whilst support for the SPD rose by 10.9%, taking the party past the 40% mark), but it had already become clear very early on that the Union was heading for a categorical defeat. The Union had lost too many Länder, one after the other, and from the opinion polls too it was clear – at least to insiders – that there would be no way of turning things around again, as the Union had managed to do in the previous Kohl-Scharping standoff. In the end, the call for a need for change – with change supposedly being a good thing for any democracy – meant that actual political differences faded into the background. This situation was made more obvious since during the last few months of the election campaign the Union even succeeded in breaking the spell with regard to the political competence of Kohl’s challenger. In other words, even the legendary Churchill had to face up to the fact that ‘grateful’ is not a word in the voter’s vocabulary, and the same applies to the Spanish socialist Gonzalez¹⁰ . Especially with the media we have today, the ‘electoral fatigue factor’ must surely set in earlier rather than later. There simply comes a time when the ‘establishment’ is deemed to have served its purpose in the eyes of the public – whether it be left- or right-wing.

Incidentally, the Landtag (regional parliament) elections held in Bavaria two weeks before the general election showed quite clearly that the German people do not want a purely social democratic or socialist Germany or Europe. Instead, the voters in that election deliberately opted for continuity. However, in that instance continuity and modernity (epitomized by the expression ‘laptop and lederhosen’) were successfully reconciled with one another. In a changed electoral landscape where the proportion of staunch support is universally declining, voters’ behaviour is more flexible and more unpredictable. Moreover, this situation is also exacerbated by the fact that the ability of the political ‘milieus’ still calling the shots in Germany to impress themselves on the minds of voters, especially supporters of the two most popular parties, is diminishing. The lower the number of staunch supporters with a clear world view, the harder these two parties are forced to try and win over new voters by extending their platform to appeal to as many members of the electorate as possible. Yet the question raised in a celebrated series of articles published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, namely “What does left- or right-wing mean today?”, is harder than ever to answer. According to Anthony Giddens¹¹ , politics is apparently losing its ability to shape our lives and ideologies have become devoid of content. In saying this, Giddens is in step with an opinion which is also widespread amongst the German public, since most parties appear to have shed their original intellectual frames of reference. In that respect, particularly since the end of the East-West conflict, it is difficult for any popular party to present the electorate with a precise, programmatic message. And it was this that proved to be the decisive problem with the Union’s policies. For there were no major clashes, at least as far as voters were aware; no longer can one side of the political spectrum claim terms like ‘progress’ or ‘modernization’ for their own. Consequently – to take but one example – when the SPD’s culture spokesman, Michael Naumann, argued in favour of rebuilding a castle in Berlin, the Hohenzollern-Schloß, but not of erecting the Holocaust memorial in the acclaimed prizewinning form, the cultural policy practised by the old federal government seems almost progressive.

The end of the social democratic era was also repeatedly being postulated because the working population, traditionally champions of social democracy, has become more and more homogeneous – a general phenomenon in modern industrial societies with their rapidly expanding services sector. For a long time the social democrats – whether traditionalists, especially in conjunction with the trade unions, or social democrats calling for renewal – reacted to this development as if paralysed. However, the election victory in Germany could not be attributed to any renewal of the social democrats’ platform, but specifically to their attempt to cancel out any political antagonism by wording their aims in a ‘catch-all’ manner. In so doing they profited from painting the momentum for change in our modern society – i.e. globalization – in a rather negative light, labelling it a dreaded product of neo-liberalism and thereby responding to the supposedly ‘conservative’ fears of part of society.

All in all, when analysing the election result there can be no denying that the party-political landscape in Germany has changed dramatically in recent decades. All the same, the deal struck between the two socialist parties in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania – like the Saxony-Anhalt government ‘tolerated’ by the PDS¹²  as a kind of preliminary stage in the reconciliation process – is generating momentum that should not be underestimated, because the social acceptability of the PDS, the party which sprung up in the wake of the SED, can and is supposed to raise the coalition including the successors of the GDR’s old guard to the level of normality, thereby leading in the long term to a structurally ‘left-wing’ majority in Germany. Whereas the PDS has so far remained a party belonging to the political milieu in eastern Germany, the Greens are a predominantly western German party. A good 19 years after the founding of the Green Party at federal level, it has now progressed from a party thrown up by a populist ‘movement’¹³  to reach its goal of responsibility in government. In so doing, it has dispelled the suspicion occasionally mooted that the existence of the Greens meant a divided left wing could never gain any majorities in Germany. We now have three parties on the political left in Germany: the SPD, the PDS and the Greens - who, despite their environmental origins are still a dominant ‘left-wing’ party for the time being. The traditional West German three-party model in the Bundestag has given way to a fuzzier five-party configuration.

The conclusion that can be drawn at this point is that it is too early at present to judge some of the speculation going on in the press that the newly elected government will remain in power for more than four years. In the past, there was reason to believe the political analysts who maintained that a voter’s defensive reaction to a government which looks as if it has passed its sell-by date plays a more decisive role in their decision about how to vote than any ‘positive’ decision to vote in a new government. Were this finding to continue to apply in the future, then the survival of the current government set-up in Germany would depend primarily on its performance. Regardless of the basic political glasses through which the newly elected government is viewed, its start has been dogged by a surprisingly wide range of practical shortcomings. And even if we are forced to acknowledge that any new government needs time to set up the structures it requires to act effectively (after all, the cabinet contains three former prime-ministers), this one’s beginning was overshadowed by a marked lack of coordination across the ministerial board. Furthermore, not only does any coalition government have predetermined breaking points, but the divide between social democratic modernists (Hombach) and traditionalists (Lafontaine) is having an additional paralytic effect. At the same time it has not yet become clear whether the new chancellor is more of a pragmatist or a mediator between these two camps or how decisive a role he plays in matters of substance. All the same, despite all the tensions within the present federal government, in all probability it will stay the course and serve a full term. Hence, the theoretically conceivable scenario of an SPD-FDP coalition hardly seems very likely today.

In addition, if we take a look at the political landscape in the other EU Member States (especially in Scandinavia, France, Portugal or in some of the future members) we see that changes of the parties in government are much more ‘run-of-the-mill’ there than is the case in Germany. Nonetheless, there can be no denying that at this point in time – around the world – election victories by Christian democratic and conservative parties are a rarity. Having said that, the current left-wing alliances in the individual EU Member States by no means constitute a monolithic structure. For instance, the three Benelux countries have centre-left coalitions, whose economic and social policies differ quite considerably. And most EU Member States have coalition governments.

Which substantial changes in German politics
will impact on the European Union? – An initial, provisional assessment of Germany’s new European policy:

On 27 October 1998 the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that so far there had been no indication “that the continuity of Germany’s foreign policy will be lost. Western integration and European unification are elements which are not being called into question by the popular parties. Perseverance with the German system has its advantages. A Germany which moves ahead in steps which are anything less than small cannot be in anyone’s interests.”¹⁴  Nonetheless, there are already indications that Germany’s European policy and foreign policy are changing. In this connection, the political commentator Karl-Rudolf Korte speaks of a “change of focus in foreign policy”, writing: “And yet the assurances of continuity given in the first few days are deceptive, merely superficial phenomena.”¹⁵  Overall, the already apparent changes in European policy certainly give food for thought:

Firstly, if there is no conviction and no vision, there can be no German strategy regarding Europe. There are already signs that, for the first time, the generation which finds itself working the machinery of government (perhaps with the exception of Saarland’s Oskar Lafontaine) has had little or no experience of the divisive effect of borders. What is more, European policy is less of an ‘issue close to their hearts’. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung then went on to describe the first visit paid to the European Commission in Brussels by the new German chancellor under the headline “Lackof vision”.¹⁶  An analysis of the chancellor’s speech in the first debate on European policy in the new legislative period on 10 December 1998, one day before the summit of EU heads of state and government in
Vienna, shows just how great the danger is of the new federal government succumbing to populist tendencies, especially in connection with Germany’s situation as a net contributor to the EU, and thereby not representing German interests strongly enough. In the debate the government referred in particular to the EU’s Edinburgh summit, where decisions were taken on measures for the overall promotion of the new German Länder via a ‘financial tableau’, which had also been broadly approved by the opposition at the time. The danger of the domestic consensus on Germany’s European policy being broken should not be played down – sending out shock waves that might even reach as far as the CSU.¹⁷  Schröder speaks unselfconsciously about “Germany’s national interests,” which have to be looked after, constantly implying that the government voted out of office did not do enough in this respect, as if Kohl and Waigel, in the context of decisions affecting the EU’s finances, had let the long-serving socialist president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors (though Schröder has avoided naming any names), “walk all over them” at the Edinburgh Summit.¹⁸ 

Secondly, by having the coalition agreement include the demand that the North Atlantic Treaty organization desist from a nuclear first strike, the new government isolated itself vis-à-vis the other NATO countries, which are at the same time EU Member States, insofar as the position as stated by Foreign Minister Fischer was adopted without discussing the matter with the SPD’s coalition partner and a compromise had to be sought with some difficulty. The statement by Ludger Vollmer, the minister of state at the Federal Foreign Office, that Germany no longer needs a “standing army”¹⁹  conveyed further uncertainty regarding Germany’s faithful support for the alliance. The fact that early in December 1998 France and Great Britain agreed at their summit in the French town of Saint Malo to deepen Europe’s defence identity and that Germany was excluded from this important security policy initiative highlights Germany’s current isolation in the domain of Europe’s foreign and security policy. Whilst the experts are discussing both sides of the argument concerning the right to a nuclear first strike²⁰ , one thing is certain: Fischer’s rationale, which was not born out of any current necessity, is not promoting German interests in the alliance.

Perhaps the German chancellor was unaware of the explosive potential of the coalition agreement vis-à-vis NATO’s internal debate at the time the agreement was signed. The isolation of the German federal government with respect to Fischer’s go-it-alone initiative (rather than touch base with the alliance) is also apparent in the reaction by American Defense Secretary William Cohen when Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping²¹ , who was taken by surprise by Fischer’s initiative, visited Washington: “We discussed nuclear policy and I made it clear that the United States is opposed to any change in this policy because we are convinced that the present nuclear doctrine is serving to keep the peace and enhancing the deterrent effect.”²²  Fischer’s position can probably be put down to the fact that for tactical party-political reasons he needs reasons for a foreign policy topic, which he can use to help him bring home to the grass-roots membership of his party that the German foreign policy he is conducting is not an embodiment of ‘continuity’ in all respects, but differs from the preceding government’s on one important point. This, he no doubt hopes, will give him more political room for manoeuvre within his party.

There are already signs of a trend in German foreign policy towards strengthening the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which will doubtless not fail to impact on the European Union’s common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and the endeavour to turn the Western European Union (WEU) into the EU’s security policy pillar in practice as well as theory. For there is – mostly tacit – rivalry between the need to deepen the EU’s CFSP, on the one hand, and the need to reinforce the OSCE, on the other. And whilst the aim here is not to call into question the OSCE’s usefulness in principle, unrealistic hopes are frequently pinned on its problem-solving capacity. There are already signs of this trend in the coalition agreement: “The OSCE is the only trans-European security organization. That makes it irreplaceable.” But what is far more irreplaceable is NATO, which also has a trans-European structure with its NATO Cooperation Council. After all, NATO has mobilized a strong 1,500-man ‘Extraction Force’ of French troops stationed in Macedonia to protect the 200 unarmed OSCE observers in Kosovo.

The fact that the role played by the USA can also be called into question is something that Egon Bahr, the SPD’s old security policy master, pointed out in an article published in his name in Die Welt. “Now that the Warsaw pact is no more, America, which played an indispensable role as a protector of Europe’s freedom and counterweight to the Soviet Union, is no longer needed to safeguard Europe militarily. That is a valuable dividend of the peace following the happy outcome of the Cold War.”²³  It must be in the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany for the USA to continue seeing itself as a quasi-European power and not be forced out. However, Bahr, who continues to be highly regarded in the SPD for his trailblazing ideas, went on to say that Russia remains “as indispensable as America for the organization of European security”. In so saying he places the USA and Russia on an equal footing, but rejects any further expansion of the NATO alliance, only to go on and “attribute new tasks” to the OSCE “and develop a system for dealing with crises in a timely manner.”

Thirdly, there are indications that the new federal government has a much more restrained approach to the eastward enlargement of the European Union: "The negotiating process with the five candidates for accession is so complicated, both economically and legally, that it would be reckless for us to say today when it will be over."²⁴  This would give rise to expectations “that can never be fulfilled” (Gerhard Schröder). In prospective EU countries, especially Poland, the German federal government’s lack of commitment to enlargement is being criticized openly. In the past, setting deadlines has been a method used in European policy for putting a corresponding amount of pressure on the respective negotiations. This was particularly successful when the target date of ‘1992’ was cited in connection with the completion of the European Single Market. Perhaps the reason for the German federal government’s reticence in this respect is that it fears the free movement of workers enabled by any rapid extension of the EU’s eastern border as the result of full integration.

Fourthly, the amended wording of Article 3 c) i) adding "the promotion of coordination between employment policies of the Member States with a view to enhancing their effectiveness by developing a coordinated strategy for employment" – which was at the time a compromise to induce the freshly elected French government at the time, headed by Lionel Jospin, to approve monetary union and the stability criteria – clears the way for fresh ideas on European employment policy. In its ‘Joint Employment Report – 1998’²⁵  the European Commission also greets the call by the new German federal government to incorporate into the European Union’s employment policy guidelines binding, verifiable targets for scaling down long-term unemployment. However, inevitable though compromises in European policy may be, this is hardly acceptable: According to the current wording of the EC Treaty, a liberal economic system has been the EU’s economic policy credo, for it has not entailed keeping individual nation states in line by means of employment and social programmes. Each Member State has borne the main responsibility for such issues, with all their undeniable trans-European dimensions. Again, according to the principle of subsidiarity, a term mentioned less and less often since the change of government in Germany, an EU-wide employment policy makes no sense. There is certainly no objection to the Commission ‘monitoring’ labour market policy in the individual EU Member States, but then again it makes much more sense than an EU-wide employment policy to approximate more legal provisions and also eliminate some of the fiscal barriers which are causing problems for the Single Market. In addition, there are reservations regarding the substance of a European employment policy. In 1981-1982 France, under Mitterrand, failed in its Keynesian attempt to conduct a classical demand-oriented economic policy. The result was a mountainous debt.

On the basis of all the experience hitherto gathered in Europe, a joint European employment policy would not only cost a great deal of money, but would also prove particularly draining on the economies of those EU Member States which were especially advanced in industrial terms. And whereas a large-scale trans-European employment programme costing billions hardly seems a realistic prospect at present, merely because of the budget it would require, in view of the current, powerful clout of the political left, which traditionally exerts a major national influence on economic policy, the motto must be ‘nip this bad idea in the bud!’

On an occasion such as this the role played by the European Commission as the guardian of the treaties is particularly important. Admittedly, it is impressive how faithfully the Belgian commissioner, Karel Van Miert, himself a product of the socialist movement, has reiterated the liberal principles of European competition law in all Member States and in many cases also managed to apply them successfully. In so doing he has not only made new friends across the entire political spectrum, in other words far beyond the social democratic-socialist camp, but has also not allowed himself to be intimidated by threatening gestures, including those coming from Germany – and for this he deserves recognition. After all, ultimately the commissioners will only go down in EU history if they genuinely base their own decisions on European law.

Fifthly, the general question also arises as to whether the consensus so far on the framework conditions for regulative policy in the successful internal market and the Economic and Monetary Union should be dispelled. Immediately after coming to power, the new German federal government – would you believe it – adopted a monetary policy tone which ultimately shook the foundations of the painstakingly wrested autonomy of the European Central Bank (ECB) and called it into question. As the reader will recall, the Maastricht Treaty succeeded in safeguarding the ECB’s autonomy even more effectively than that of Germany’s Bundesbank, because Maastricht was a treaty concluded under international law, an instance of European primary law. As a result, a number of Member States were forced to give their existing national banks the same degree of autonomy, which was a very painful experience for them. This was even the case in France, which traditionally favours a particularly high degree of state intervention.

At the conference of SPD MEPs held on 8 December, Finance Minister Lafontaine called for a form of ‘global taxation’, which could also be termed “the return of political economics”. There is a need to try “to take steps at European level to correlate and coordinate monetary policy, wage policy and fiscal policy in such a way that doing so effectively boosts overall demand, creating a higher level of employment.”²⁶  By saying this, in a single breath Lafontaine mentioned monetary policy, wage policy and fiscal policy, whereby monetary policy lies within the responsibility of the autonomous European Central Bank.²⁷  The noises made by Finance Minister Lafontaine with regard to fixing exchange rates by having target areas and with respect to the independence of the Bundesbank – read ECB, most likely – caused astonishment, especially in the Netherlands, with its social democratic-liberal government. The Dutch were concerned that the attitude taken by the new German federal government could weaken the euro. Indeed, in the Netherlands a higher German budget deficit and rising government debt is interpreted as a major new danger for a strong euro. In this connection, a letter sent by the Italian commissioner, Mario Monti, to his colleagues also caused astonishment. In the letter, Monti, whose remit covers budget-related matters, pointed out that a distinction had to be drawn between investment-related and consumption-related expenditure. A discussion along these lines, which would certainly be justified in a university seminar context, calls into question the painstakingly forged consensus with regard to the stability pact. The left-wing alliances in Europe are taking his letter to mean that the 3-percent threshold for annual new debt should be interpreted with a large measure of generosity in times of recession. The aim of putting pressure on the Bundesbank and hence the ECB is probably to ensure that promoting employment is attributed at least the same status as monetary stability. At least, both the coordination of economic and financial policy within the group of 11 euro countries and the Amsterdam Treaty’s chapter on employment should be compatible with the aims of Lafontaine and his French counterpart, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, for both men believe that these two aspects constitute a decisive lever for forcing through a coordinated strategy for all of Europe’s EU Member States. Imposing an employment-related target on the ECB would be a violation of the treaty. “It will not take long before Bonn, Paris and Rome declare the most far-fetched government expenditure to be an investment in the future. Are the days when the stability pact was supposed to be narrowly interpreted already over?” (Peter Hort)²⁸ 

To answer that question straight away, Europe is not turning ‘socialist’, at least not in the traditional sense of state ownership of the means of production. Why is that?

First of all, according to all the findings of election research, the decisive element for the change in government in Germany – and in other countries before that – was most likely not that voters wanted socialism dressed up in new clothes. Instead, most of them probably voted the way they did for much more prosaic reasons, namely that they wanted new faces and a breath of fresh air, believing that the new government would break up crusty old structures and bring in a government that was capable of overcoming a certain inability to make decisions. Consequently, the Union’s strategy of criticizing the ‘barrier to reform’ by the SPD-dominated Bundesrat came a cropper. When all is said and done, the following observation made in Die Zeit is certainly correct: “The winning concept in Europe at the moment is not social democracy, but opposition. What is making waves is not vision, but protest, sometimes – as was recently the case in France and may also happen during the next Swedish election – against austerity programmes which will further the cause of globalization much more than of the euro; sometimes irritation sweeps run-down, tired old governments that have been rocked by successive scandals out of office, as was the case in Spain and England. The Europe which yesterday looked right-wing and now seems left-wing could swing back to the right again tomorrow.”²⁹  Admittedly the social democrats/socialists have also managed to fulfil some of the need for security in a time of unemployment and globalization, but they too will one day be measured against the reality of their policy, and in today’s democracies nothing is more continuous than change.

Secondly, in the meantime the basic principles of a social market economy have become firmly anchored in many parties which still call themselves socialist. Indeed, many socialist and social democratic parties have turned their backs on nationalization-based models. All the same, in most left-wing parties in Europe the need for state regulation of the economy is being promoted to a much greater extent than is the case amongst the Christian democratic proponents of a social market economy.

Thirdly, for Tony Blair terms such as ‘globalization’ tend to be more of an excuse for regarding the necessary modernization of his own society as a challenge³⁰ . As a result, he promises a ‘third way’ between ‘laisser-faire’ and state regulation.³¹  ‘Blairism’ – which many people interpret as Thatcherism with a smiling face – is very far removed from the state-centred thinking of Jospin or Lafontaine. Surely it was only the Maastricht Treaty which bound Jospin’s hands, preventing him from boosting mass purchasing power by implementing an expansive fiscal policy. The three Benelux countries all have centre-left governments, whose economic policies do not significantly differ from each other. For example, Wim Kok, of the Dutch Labour Party has shown how companies and unions could be enabled to have a joint labour market strategy without relinquishing his social democratic identity. And the Scandinavian party leaders have succeeded in implementing programmes of cuts and restructuring measures in their respective countries. In other words, with all the huffing and puffing about an international face of social democracy and socialist solidarity, the experiences and traditions in the various nation states are still extremely different, though they include a fear of German over-dominance. Furthermore, all the European partners acknowledge that creating ‘more favourable’ framework conditions in their own country will enhance foreign companies’ inclination to invest in them, which is why the rapid harmonization of, say, fiscal policy in Europe’s EU Member States would seem to be unlikely. In spite of all the shared convictions, those of the Socialist International, the significance of which is generally overestimated even by political commentators, the fact remains that the way individual heads of government behave depends strongly on their own respective national interests. This much is clear from the ongoing debate about the ‘Agenda 2000’ – especially where the budget figures, agricultural policy and issues associated with enlargement, are concerned – as well as in connection with other topics of fundamental importance, such as fiscal policy. As Die Zeit rightly observed: "European social democracy is a mere chimera."³² 

Fourthly, globalization would immediately ‘penalize’ any market compartmentalization and any striving to call the competitiveness of individual sectors of industry into question by awarding even more state subsidies. The EU Member States as a whole would become less competitive and would therefore fall behind the USA in economic policy terms as well as in comparison with an Asia undergoing an economic recovery. Incidentally, there are already fears in the USA that the recipes for dealing with unemployment and globalization between the EU and the USA are so far apart in principle that the two major economic blocs are bound to clash – for "the United States and Europe are on a collision course over the issue of globalization" – and complaints are being made about the danger of European protectionism aimed at securing jobs.³³ 

However, withdrawing the consensus on economic policy hitherto reigning in the EU would tend to hamper investments in the 15 EU countries, and capital ‘flight’ would be the inevitable result. Even if the current social democratic-socialist trend persisted in the individual Member States, for the reasons I have already mentioned we would not find ourselves in a ‘socialist Europe’.

But European integration is currently being strongly influenced from two other sources:

Firstly, with respect to the question of what is meant by the ‘end goal’ of European integration, there is no longer a consensus, as was previously the case, especially before German reunification. and discussion of this is by no means taking place exclusively in Germany, although it is of particularly great importance here. After all, there were two sides to
the European coin. On the one hand, after World War II and throughout the East-West conflict, integration meant security for (West) Germany – i.e. the firm integration into the West was supposed to prevent Soviet imperialism from spreading further to Germany as a whole, and ulti-
mately to the whole of Western Europe. On the other, it meant security
vis-à-vis Germany, with the partner nations in the West seeking to integrate at least part of Germany so irrevocably as to rule out a special destiny for Germany once and for all. There was a relatively broad consensus amongst the six founder nations of the European Community – which brings to mind above all the Christian democrats Adenauer, De Gasperi and Schumann – about the aims of integration and the projects this involved. Indeed, the end goal was to build an economically prosperous Europe that was rooted in Christianity and influenced by Catholic social doctrine, and which had overcome the hurdle of nationalism that had proved to be so destructive to the continent’s peace, the general aim being to set up a kind of ‘United States of Europe’. But this notion of the end goal of integration altered in the light of the Community’s acceptance of new Member States. Up until Germany’s unification, our national interests were pretty much identical to those of European integration.³⁴  For there was a widespread belief that the division of Germany could only be overcome in a European context, namely within the framework of European integration.

Once Germany had been reunified, the question of what its ‘national’ interests in this Community of Member States were played a much stronger role in the domestic European policy debate. What is more, the end goal of creating a ‘United States of Europe’, which had been repeatedly held up prior to reunification and was still being championed by that honorary citizen of Europe, Helmut Kohl, when he came to office as chancellor, gave way to the view that the European Community was something new, a structure all of its own kind. In general, in Germany as well the debate on European integration was connected less and less with upheaval in Europe for the purpose of maintaining peace there. In fact there was growing scepticism about the ‘monster in Brussels’, even in intellectual circles, as elements of this integration process became a model for success. And, if anything, this scepticism is being spread even further, in a somewhat populist way, by the new German chancellor’s choice of words when he says that money in Europe is being ‘squandered’³⁵ .

On the other hand, with the exception of France’s President Chirac, who finds himself sharing power with a socialist prime minister, since the end of the Mitterrand-Kohl era, the latest political leaders in Europe now no longer find themselves bearing a political responsibility the parameters of which reflect a direct experience of war. After all, the heads of government and policy-makers in most Member States today are people whose political experience-based values are the product of a post-war period that was really rather peaceful, in spite of the East-West conflict. Consequently, European policy is being viewed less and less as an actively creative task and identified more and more with a clear interest-oriented policy³⁶ , explained not by invoking positive visions, but rather in pragmatic terms, whereby the pragmatism on the one hand pays lip service to the European ideal whilst remaining sceptical. In the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble has been critical of the lack of a principle-based approach in European policy.³⁷  Again, this choice of words too gives a general indication of how joyless and defensive Germany’s new head of government is in his interpretation of European policy³⁸ , whereas Foreign Minister Fischer’s tone is very much more geared towards the basic intellectual and political principles underlying European integration. Today, the wonderful symbol of two statesmen – Mitterrand and Kohl – walking hand in hand by the graves of the victims of war, both men being representatives of the generation that took part in World War II, would no longer move the public in the same way, because the vast majority of today’s EU citizens quite simply lack direct, personal experience of war and the hardship associated with it.

Where Germany is concerned there is a real danger that the party-political consensus on European policy will give way to confrontation, and not only because of the European elections scheduled for June 1999. The less the new government strives for consensus on European policy, the more this policy will become synonymous with ‘socialist European policy’ and the greater will be the danger of a stand-off. These considerations are already affecting the line of thinking within the CSU in Bavaria. The efforts made by German social democrats to make more use of European policy as a party-political instrument could result in greater restraint in this sphere of policy within the CDU, which has traditionally been the German pro-European party. However, everything that Wolfgang Schäuble has said to date makes it clear that the CDU does not intend to deviate from the European policy line it has adopted in the past.

The ominous decision by the coalition – a first in German politics – within the context of the coalition agreement, namely to have the two commissioner posts to which Germany is entitled filled by members from both parties in government, effectively leaves the current opposition without any responsibility within the European institutions. It has become standard practice for the larger Member States (France, the United Kingdom and Spain), which each appoint two commissioners to let the leading opposition party also play a role in European policy. In this light, then, the coalition’s decision is highly significant, for it leaves a question mark hanging over the issue of whether the coalition is at all interested in as far-reaching a consensus over European policy as possible. It looks as if the new chancellor, who has just approved the decision to award Helmut Kohl honorary European citizenship, intends to deviate more markedly from the course of continuity in European policy than general statements on the subject would appear to suggest. He should take a look at a speech given in Brussels by his party colleague and minister for Schleswig-Holstein, Gerd Walter, several months before the change in government in Germany. Even then, Walter expressed doubts about Germany’s pro-European approach, criticized the Federal Republic’s intellectual elite and said, to be exact: "Germany, the draught horse of Europe, is falling lame at the very moment when the EU cart it is pulling has to negotiate some tough terrain: The Union is heading for the biggest changes in its history."³⁹  Some conviction about Europe is called for, including on the part of the new German chancellor.

_________________

1 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 4 May 1977

2 Ralf Dahrendorf, Die Chancen der Krise. Über die Zukunft des Liberalismus (The likelihood of a crisis. On the future of liberalism.), Stuttgart 1983, p. 17

3 One of Dahrendorf’s key hypotheses in the book in which he paid tribute to the "social democratic century" at great length was this: "The century has been as social and democratic as it could have been. Now that it is reaching its end we have (almost) all become social democrats." (ibid. p. 16). Today, Dahrendorf explains that many people misunderstood his hypothesis of the "end of social democratic era" to mean that the social democratic parties could not win any elections. "That was not the intended meaning. Instead, the hypothesis went much deeper, claiming that social democratic policy has worn itself aut. If social democratic parties win elections, they will pursue policies other than those on the back of which they came to power." (Ralf Dahrendorf, Die neue Parteienlandschaft (The new party-political landscape) in Die Zeit, 25 June 1998 edition).

4 Peter Glotz, Mit uns zieht die alte Zeit (The old days are over with us), in: Die Woche, 30 August 1996 edition

5 PSE press release dated 19 November 1998, entitled "Social democratic finance ministers’ briefing: Economic reform in the EEC – the new way in Europe".

6 Heribert Prantl, Der Zauber des Anfangs (The magic of the beginning), Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 October 1998 edition

7 The 3 October 1998 edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung even went so far as to say: “There is some support for the hypothesis that there would have been no change in government in Germany if Kohl had kept the promise he made four years ago and handed over the office of chancellor to his designated successor, Wolfgang Schäuble.”

8 For a much more detailed commentary, see Gerd Langguth, Suche nach Sicherheiten – Ein Psychogramm der Deutschen (Looking for security – A psychological profile of the German people), Stuttgart 1975

9 This has also been confirmed by the Allensback Polling Institute’s CAPITAL Elite Panel, which found that 62% of some 600 top managers (61% of CDU supporters) gave the following reason for the changing of the guard: "It was a vote to oust Kohl; people were tired of him". Another 30% said that the "CDU was burnt out and stale" (26% of CDU supporters said this), whereas 20% cited "poor presentation and a bad election campaign" (25% of CDU supporters were of this opinion). Only 7% thougt that the main reason was "the fact that political reform had come to a standstill as a result of the SPD’s barrier" (in the Bundesrat) (7% of CDU supporters also thougth this was the case); (Allensback Polling Institute poll no. 4201, November 1998).

10 See also Matthias Jung/Dieter Roth, Wer zu spät geht, den bestraft der Wähler (Anyone slow in departing, leaves voters smarting), in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B52/98, 18 December 1998, p. 3 ff.; and Oscar W. Gabriel/Frank Brettschneider, Die Bundestagswahl 1998: Ein Plebiszit gegen Kanzler Kohl? (The 1998 general election: A plebiscite against chancellor Kohl?) ibid., p. 20 ff.

11 Anthony Giddens, Jenseits von Links und Rechts. Die Zukunft radikaler Demokratie (Beyond left and right. The future of redical democracy), Frankfurt-am-Main 1997, p. 9

12 For comments on the anti-democratic tendencies of this party, see: Gerd Langguth, Ob friedlich oder militant, wichtig bleibt der Widerstand – Die PDS sucht enge Verbindung zu den verschiedenen Spielarten des Linksextremismus (Whether peaceful or militant, opposition remains important – The PDS is seeking to latch on closely to the various games played by left-wing extremists), in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 September 1995 edition.

13 For a more detailed presentation, see Gerd Langguth, Der grüne Faktor. Von der Bewegung zur Partei? (The Green factor – From movement to party?), Osnabrück-Zürich 1984

14 Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27 Oktober 1998 edition

15 Karl-Rudolf Korte, Unbefangen und gelassen. Über die außenpolitische Normalität der Berliner Republik (Unselfconscious and relaxed. On the normality of the Berlin republic’s foreign policy), in: Internationale Politik, December 1998, no. 12, p. 5

16 Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27 November 1998 edition

17 In this connection see the interview with Bavarian Minister-President Edmund Stoiber entitled Schröder wird scheitern (Schröder will fail), in Die Zeit, 3 December 1998 edition

18 Gerhard Schröder at the conference of SPD MEPs on 8 December 1998

19 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 November 1998 edition

20 Professor Czempiel from the Hesse Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research supported the substance, but not the timing of Fischer’s initiative or the way in which it was taken ("However, the threat of a first strike has become absolutely essential. The conventional superiority of NATO is so big today that it could not only take on the run-down russian army – in the unlikely event that such a scenario should arise – but also deal with any conceivable challenges". Die Welt, 27 November 1998), as did Karl Kaiser (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 December 1998 edition), unlike General Klaus Naumann in the 10 December 1998 edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “The military prerequisite for maintaining peace with a relatively high degree of security is having a wide range of flexible weapons, which could very credibly be put to use, to deter an aggressor from resorting to the use of force. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate threat in NATO’s deterrent potential, since NATO does not have combat-ready biological or chemical weapons … The mere existence of NATO’s nuclear option generates the high level of uncertainty about the alliance’s potential response, thereby preventing war, albeit anly if its actual use is not ruled out a priori.“

21 Scharping seid that Fischer had acted without his knowledge. He also pointed out that these thoughts would not remain without consequence, because at least the other nuclear powers – apart from America, Great Britain and France – would doubtless reject the notion in question. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 November 1998 edition)

22 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 November 1998 edition

23 Die Welt, 12 November 1998

24 Speech by Gerhard Schröder at the conference of SPD MEPs held in Saarbrücken on
8 December 1998

25 European Commission, Joint Employment Report – 1998

26 Oskar Lafontaine, speech given at the conference of SPD MEPs in Saarbrücken on 8 December 1992

27 A little bit later on, Lafontaine said: "Nobody is questioning the independence of the central banks, but when we say that, it does not mean to say that there can be no discussion of the role played by monetary policy in an enlightened democracy. Where will we end up if independence means we can’t even talk about anything anymore?"

28 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 October 1998 edition

29 Jochen Buchsteiner, Tony und sein dritter Weg (Tony and his Third Way), in: Die Zeit, 13 June 1997 edition (Buchsteiner turned out to be wrong about Sweden).

30 For an analysis of Blair’s policy, see Wolfgang Merkel, Die Endzeit-Propheten haben sich getäuscht (The prophets of doom were wrong), in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 December 1998 edition

31 Tony Blair, Der dritte Weg – für eine neue Sozialdemokratie (The Third Way – towards a new social democracy), in Die Welt, 22 September 1998 edition

32 Buchsteiner, ibid.

33 Jacob Heilbrunn, Europa wird Amerika nicht folgen (Europe will not follow America), in Die Zeit, 5 November 1998 edition

34 For a more detailed presentation, see Gerd Langguth, Die deutsche Frage und die Europäische Gemeinschaft (The German question and the European Community), in Karl Dietrich Bracher/Manfred Funke/Hans-Peter Schwarz (eds.), Deutschland zwischen Krieg und Frieden (Germany between war and peace), Bonn 1990, pp. 246-247

35 Gerhard Schröder, speaking at the conference of SPD MEPs in Saarbrücken on 8 December 1998

36 As Gerhard Schröder put it, speaking at the conference of SPD MEPs in Saarbrücken: "Taking care of Germany’s national interests in the true sense of the phrase is not an alternative to Europe, quite the opposite. We are entitled to do exactly what others are also doing."

37 Thus, in the Budestag debate on European policy on 10 December 1998, in the run-up to the European Council summit in Vienna on 11-12 December 1998, opposition leader Wolfgang Schäuble pointed out that in his view it was “regrettable” that at the beginning of his government policy statement Chancellor Schröder had described the launch of European Monetary Union merely as a “process of change”: “For me it is a major, historic success story for the people in Europe. European unification – and an this point we agree – is the most important project of the second half of this century. What it has in common with the atlantic partnership, also with respect to what we recently discussed on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is that it opened up the way for peace, freedom, human rights, justice, stability, prosperity and social security for this part of Europe and for our German fatherland, achieving in this to a degree that nobody would have believed was possible 50 years ago.” (Bundestag Stenographic Report, 14^th Session, 10 December 1998, Minutes of Plenary Proceedings 14/14, p. 824)

38 Proof of this is provided by statements like the following, an element of the argumentation used by Gerhard Schröder in connection with Germany’s contribution to the EU at the conference of SPD MEPs held in Saarbrücken on 8 December 1998: "And there is a very simple explanation for this position, namely – and I say this in all friendship – the German people pay more than half of the contributions which are being squandered in Europe.”

39 Gerd Walter, Die Zweifel am europäischen Deutschland wachsen (Doubts about Germany’s pro-European approach are growing), in Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 July 1998 edition