ANALYSIS: Will Germany’s political shift lead to a stronger EU?
Brussels — Angela Merkel’s victory, and the likely shift to a centre-right government in Germany, should make European Union policy less ambiguous. But will it also make the EU stronger?
Long before this summer’s election campaign, diplomats in Brussels could be heard complaining about the mixed signals coming out of Germany’s ‘grand coalition’ of conservatives and Social Democrats.
Now that a more coherent coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP) looks set to take the helm in Germany, everyone is set to benefit, the argument goes.
‘The result of Sunday’s election clarifies the stance of Germany’s political leadership. And if Germany knows where it’s going, Europe usually knows where it’s going too,’ says Hugo Brady, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank.
Though perhaps less so than in the past, when the EU had far fewer member states, the bloc’s richest and most populous nation still shapes EU policy.
Under the outgoing coalition, an uneasy balancing act between Chancellor Merkel and her foreign minister-turned-challenger, Frank- Walter Steinmeier, pulled the bloc in opposite directions on a variety of issues, including relations with Russia and the bail-out of car maker Opel.
That source of confusion should now be over.
On tricky relations with Moscow, for instance, Antonio Missiroli, chief policy analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels, expects the appointment of a less pro-Russian foreign minister in Germany to lead to a ’shift in language’ by the EU.
This could in turn improve ties between Germany and Poland, one of Russia’s harshest critics, with a new German-Polish consensus becoming representative of the EU’s overall position, Missiroli says.
Piotr Kaczynski, a Pole who works at the Centre for European Policy Studies, agrees that ‘German-Polish relations can only improve’ under a CDU-FDP coalition.
This matters. Poland is not only the EU’s eastern powerhouse, it is also beginning to supplant Italy as one of the bloc’s ‘big four’ in the eyes of many Brussels diplomats.
It is less clear whether the new German set-up will also strengthen the Berlin-Paris axis, a traditional engine of EU integration.
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