Germany has cleared its final hurdle to a new coalition government after rank-and-file members of the centre-left Social Democratic Party backed joining a new government with the centre-right Christian Democratic Union.
While SPD leaders were buoyed by 84.6 per cent approval for the coalition deal agreed last month, the fact that nearly half the party’s membership skipped the online vote suggests a lingering scepticism.
“Yes there is a scepticism and there are open questions,” conceded Matthias Miersch, SPD general secretary, announcing the result. “But hopefully we will turn around this scepticism through our actions in office, so that those who voted no will see that it was worth it to enter office and fight for social democratic values.”
The hardest doubt to dispel is concern that after receiving just 16 per cent support in February’s federal election, its worst result since 1887, the SPD needs a break in opposition. Instead it has again chosen power in Berlin where it has ruled for seven of the last eight parliamentary terms.
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The poor election result and ongoing uncertainty is reflected in unresolved personnel questions inside the party leadership. Only one senior party figure has a fixed role in the next government: the 47-year-old party co-leader Lars Klingbeil. Seen as a rising star, Klingbeil is set to become vice-chancellor and federal finance minister, shaping crucial fiscal and investment policy in the coming four years.
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Seen as a centrist-pragmatist, Mr Klingbeil turned February’s election defeat into a negotiating advantage. As the only realistic coalition option for the CDU, his team secured seven ministerial portfolios for his party despite its disastrous result.
Unlike the previous SPD-led coalition, which collapsed over politically incompatible spending-saving plans, Mr Klingbeil’s most difficult challenge as finance minister will not be a shortage of cash. After years of lobbying, the SPD has finally secured a €1 trillion off-balance-sheet investment fund for infrastructure and defence.
Instead a cash-flush Mr Klingbeil will struggle to convince his own party of the need to consolidate the federal budget, in particular on social spending, to placate CDU conservatives.
They have been attacked by their voters and mocked by the far right as spendthrifts for a dramatic post-election reversal to back deficit-spending before consolidation targets were agreed.
SPD rank and file, as well as many backbenchers, remain deeply uneasy with the prospect of the looming alliance with a CDU that is – in tone and policy – further right than in the years under Angela Merkel.
“When I think of a grand coalition with [CDU leader Friedrich] Merz as chancellor I want to retch,” Leni Breymaier, a former SPD Bundestag backbencher, told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper.
The most pressing headache for Mr Klingbeil now is handing out SPD ministerial jobs. Apart from Mr Klingbeil, the only other senior SPD figure likely to return is outgoing defence minister Boris Pistorius. While Mr Klingbeil is the new SPD strongman, securing the parliamentary party leadership role on top of his ministerial post, his unpopular co-leader Saskia Esken faces an uncertain future.
With speculation building, the party has promised to present its team by on Monday, ahead of next Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony. The new coalition’s junior member has little time to waste: two months after it finished in third place on election night, the SPD has slumped still further in polls to just 14-15 per cent and is close to being overtaken by the opposition Greens.
On Tuesday Mr Merz is expected to secure the support of a majority of Bundestag MPs as Germany’s next federal chancellor. After this vote he will take his oath of office along with the members of his cabinet. Mr Merz’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, have already nominated their 10 ministers.
