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The fear of the future and of the 21st century stops Germany in an election that had to change everything, after Angela Merkel’s 16 years, and instead leaves behind uncertainties and ambiguities. The voters first seemed to have chosen the radical change, with the leader of the Greens Annalena Baerbock dreaming of being the second chancellor in Berlin, at least breaking through the threshold of 20% of the votes. A disappointing performance by Baerbock and concern for the costs of the ecological revolution, taxes and public spending, on the other hand, dissuaded less radical citizens from giving their consent to ecologists over 15%.
Even the number one of the historic Social Democratic SPD, Olaf Scholz, examines the results, weighing the pros and cons. True, it dispelled the shadows of spring, when the polls gave the party that was the Brandts and the Schmidts a meager 15%, bringing the socialists over 25%, but it failed to en plein, to receive a full mandate to the party, or at least to himself, like Merkel year after year. The European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, online, rightly grasps the value of Scholz’s mandate, to bring the historical left back to the center of the arena, after years of decline.
The colorless Christian Democrat of the CDU-CSU, Armin Laschet, collects the worst result in history, 24.1% and owes the comeback of recent weeks to what remains of Merkel’s charisma, with the chancellor forced to renege on her vow not to make election campaign, engaging in rally after rally. Finally, Christian Lindner’s Fdp liberals, with their 11.5%: hostile to tax increases and massive investment packages for recovery, on the agenda of the SPD and the Greens, could look to the agreement with the Christian Democrats, at least in the first place.
Whatever the tormenting days of negotiations that open, coalition “Semaforo” with red SPD, yellow and green FDP, or Jamaica with black CDU, Green and yellow FDP like the Jamaican flag, or traditional Scholz-Laschet national unity pact, yes they can already draw the crucial links.
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It was the first time, since the war, that Germany went to the polls without a chancellor in office on the list and the confusion of the voters was seen, with the parties exposed to the wind, up to +10 and -10 in the polls, to stop then the final impasse.
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Nostalgia for Merkel, a leader who also had long since exhausted energy and historical momentum, the latest glory is the stop of Trump, instead wanders about Putin, does not indicate a direct heir, and Berlin will find itself directing the G7, in 2022, with a government new, composite, without foreign authority.
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A quarter of the voters, 26%, are emigrants, of the first or second generation, proof of a country that is much more composite and different from the homogeneous image that the ruling class offers, symposium after symposium. After all, a trip to the great German cities, from Berlin to Munich, is enough to review, a century after the Bauhaus, Benjamin and Weimar, laboratories of cultures, arts, shows, cosmopolitan cuisines. The approximately 7,000 refugees, mostly Syrians, admitted by Merkel in 2015 also voted, with a humanitarian gesture that divided the country, and awarded Verdi and left Linke.
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The biggest problem hidden by the result, regardless of the name of the new chancellor and the color palette of his cabinet, however, is the confirmation of a country stuck on the threshold of a turbulent future, uncertain what to do, prey to anxieties for a status quo that fears of losing. The Germans said yes, after years of hypertrophic rigor, personified by the austere Finance Minister Schäuble, who also considered Merkel prodigal, to the EU public spending plan after the Covid-19 pandemic, but reluctantly. And now, faced with the New Deal advanced by the SPD and the Greens, they are balking, one step forward and one step back, without determination.
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As for the issues that weigh heavily on Europe, lack of common defense, technological backwardness on new issues, see Artificial Intelligence, compared to China and the USA, strategic choices in the possible Cold War between Beijing and Washington, with the countries of Asia and the Pacific, India, Japan, Australia, experimenting with new alliances that ignore our capitals, Putin’s challenges to EU security from Ukraine to Crimea, with the Kremlin-sponsored Nord Stream 2 energy loop and pipeline, no one weighed on the vote and no one will be on the government agenda. Serious mistake of myopia, which will pay for itself.
The Germans are nostalgic for the recent past, with economic security, the delegation of defense and wars to the Americans, a currency, first the mark then the euro, which ensures stability and primacy in Berlin. The disputes of the current century, the technological challenge, the exhaustion of diplomacy and the market as arenas of confrontation and the returning military friction between the great powers, a world of work where the diesel pace of the German establishment must yield to new platforms and methods, with risk and innovation prevailing over tradition and old business models, displace the German ruling class and voters and, consequently, the whole of Europe. The farewell to London and the United Kingdom, also the result of a few missteps by Merkel and not disliked by many in Berlin, deprives Brussels of the engine of Anglo-Saxon culture: this driving role would fall to Germany, with French President Macron forced by the campaign electoral in shrill tones that do not earn him international aplomb, but the new German government, the result of these dilemmas, will not take him on.
It therefore remains – strange to say! – the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the hinge leader with the United States, the Western world and its values, capable of adhering to European welfare without hiding that a change of pace is urgently needed. So do not miss Merkel like so many German friends: worry about the cultural delay of the leading country of the Union and its consequences for us all.
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