After 22 years in the European parliament, Martin Schulz’s shift from Brussels to Berlin has attracted much interest but only modest enthusiasm in the German capital.
The 60-year-old’s arrival solves one problem for his Social Democratic Party (SPD) but creates another.
Mr Schulz is now likely to take over as German foreign minister when his SPD colleague Frank Walter Steinmeier in all likelihood is elected Germany’s next federal president in the new year.Mr Schulz is also likely to secure a safe spot on the SPD list for next year’s federal election in his home state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Yet he is said to have his eyes on higher things: as the SPD candidate to challenge Angela Merkel as chancellor ahead of next September’s poll.
While Mrs Merkel of the CDU threw her hat into the ring on Sunday, the SPD insists it will not unveil its candidate before the end of January.
First refusal goes to party leader Sigmar Gabriel (57), who has avoided the job twice before. That said, the arrival of Mr Schulz and news this week that Mr Gabriel’s wife is expecting another baby may give the SPD leader a get-out clause.
Massive task
In a public television poll a third of Germans found Mr Schulz the better SPD challenger – compared to 30 per cent for Gabriel.
Yet with the party polling just 22 per cent – 10 points behind the CDU – heading next year’s SPD campaign will be a massive task. And that is where doubts creep in about Mr Schulz.
A love-hate figure in his native Germany, his fans see him as a passionate European whose regular television presences here have given EU politics – and the European Parliament – a higher profile than might otherwise have been the case.
Few of Mr Schulz’s critics would go as far as Silvio Berlusconi, who likened him once to a Hollywood concentration camp guard. But his critics see Mr Schulz as the ultimate apparatchik, with a habit of elbowing his way into political situations above his station.
Glee in CDU
While the SPD wonders what to do with Mr Schulz, his imminent arrival in Berlin sparked glee in Mrs Merkel’s CDU.
“He’s never worked in the executive, and if he runs as SPD chancellor hopeful he’d be Germany’s least qualified candidate ever,” said one CDU source.
“But these days it seems that there’s a trend for outsiders running for high office.”