Merkel has to fight for political survival?

The Jamaica negotiations on forming a coalition government failed in Germany on Sunday. The FDP party pulled out and took responsibility for the failure of the talks, Le Monde reports, with its leader Christian Lindner preferring the risk of new elections in 2018 to the risk of an electoral disaster should the party govern – which is what happened the last time the party was in a governing coalition, between 2009 and 2013.

The failure of the talks, Le Monde adds, is attributed to divisions on migration and environmental policies. According to Christian Lindner, talks had failed because the discussion partners had no common vision for Germany’s modernisation, Mediafax.ro further reports.

The ball is now in the court of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who needs to find potential solutions to form a government, Sydsvenskan writes. The German President, The Irish Times notes, has already warned Berlin leaders that Europe is waiting for them to shoulder their collective responsibility and to resolve this unprecedented political crisis.

In an interview with ARD, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her scepticism towards forming a minority government and said that, in the case of re-elections, she would stand again as the top candidate of the CDU. As reported by the front page of The Guardian, Ms Merkel indicated that she would prefer to hold fresh election in Germany, rather than lead a minority government as the collapse of German coalition talks posed the most serious threat to her power since she became German leader in 2005. As noted by Süddeutsche Zeitung, a spokesman for President Juncker has expressed faith in Germany’s stability, implying that the European Commission may support a minority government if necessary.

The EC reaction to the collapse of the coalition negotiations was deliberately calm, the Austrian media notes. “We are optimistic about Germany’s continuing stability,” said a European Commission spokesperson when asked about the potential impact on the political plans of the Union. According to La Repubblica, an attempt would be under way to persuade Martin Schulz’ SPD to agree to being a junior partner in a CDU-led government. In European media outlets, however, the failure of the talks is largely seen as a serious threat which could negatively affect the rest of Europe and delay major European projects. With the failure of the Jamaica negotiations, Germany plunged into a deep political crisis, Le Monde for instance claims. The failure of the talks and the period of uncertainty that will follow, as well as Ms Merkel’s decreasing influence, are very bad news for Europe, the French newspaper adds. This collapse, Le Monde notes in another article, comes as a cold shower in Brussels, where the leaders of the European institutions were hoping to undertake a major European relaunch after a quick reboot of the Franco-German couple.

In Brussels and Paris, the window of opportunity to launch projects for a European restructuring is believed to be limited to the first six months of 2018, with the European Commission starting to prepare the 2019 European elections in the second half year of 2018. In France, Mr Macron, who on Monday started to meet the leaders of the main political groups in France as well as the Presidents of the two French Assemblies, already wants to discuss his project of relaunching Europe, especially that of changing the vote system, a project he expects to implement for the 2019 European elections – Mr Macron is actually thinking about decreasing the number of lists, from eight regional lists to a single one for the whole country.

Le Monde reports that more generally, EU leaders have planned a euro area summit in mid-December and were counting on a “decisive impulse” from the European Council around the same time. But with a politically paralysed Germany, debating the future of the euro area will be impossible, and even making progress in the labourious Brexit negotiations will reveal difficult without Germany’s point of view. Not much is to be expected from the European summit in December, Het Financieele Dagblad claims.

The German political crisis, Arte reports, is closely monitored in France, especially by President Macron who declared that France does not have interests in a worsening of the crisis in Germany. French President Macron wants to strengthen the French-German relationship to lead his European project and, until Germany is not stabilised, France cannot count on it to work on defence, economic or migration initiatives. According to Die Welt, not only France, but also the UK, in particular depend on a stable Federal government and are therefore deeply concerned about recent developments.

Even though the European Commission has declared that the German crisis was not putting the EU at risk, some other EU Member States are also concerned, Arte reports. In Austria, Switzerland and Italy, the German negotiations failure is making the headlines. Luxembourg’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Asselborn is quoted by Die Welt as critically noting that, due to its role in the world, Germany “cannot afford” to become unstable. As Arte sums up, some are increasingly worried, considering that no progress can be made in Europe until there is a new German government, while others, such as Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Didier Reynders, are tempering the crisis, as having difficulties in forming a government is common in Belgium. In Süddeutsche Zeitung, Daniel Brössler and Alexander Mühlauer admit that it is not uncommon for EU Member States to require several months to form a new government, but they stress that Germany’s role in Europe makes the failure of the coalition talks problematic for Europe.