A giant depart : The mess Merkel leaves behind

 

The list of neglected issues is long (see our Special report). Germany looks like a purring luxury car; pop the bonnet, though, and the signs of neglect are plain to see. The public sector has failed to invest adequately or wisely, falling behind its peers in building infrastructure, especially the digital sort. This hampers not just whizzy new tech firms, but every other company, too

Germany’s most severe domestic problem is a failure to reform its pension system. Germans are ageing fast, and the baby-boomers will place an even heavier burden on the budget later this decade as they retire. On climate change, Germany has also been sluggish, and still emits more carbon per head than any other EU big country, not helped by Mrs Merkel’s shutdown of Germany’s nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011

啊德國本來就歐洲工業最大國, 難不成生產一堆化學原料和高檔車, 碳排放仍然全歐洲最低的, 有可能嗎 !! 

The eu has not grappled sufficiently with the weakness of its indebted southern members. Only during the pandemic did it create a financial instrument that lets the EU issue jointly guaranteed debt, and dispense some of the cash as grants, rather than yet more loans.

歐豬五國

In EUforeign policy, Germany could and should have been doing more to force a quicker adjustment to a less comfortable new world. China is an increasingly challenging economic and strategic rival, Russia an unpredictable threat and America a distracted and uncertain ally. Yet Germany has dithered. Despite recent increases, it spends too little on defence. It cosies up to Beijing in the hope of better trading terms

Yet Germany has dithered. Despite recent increases, it spends too little on defence. It cosies up to Beijing in the hope of better trading terms. It is giving Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, a chokehold over European energy supplies by backing the new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which, as it happens, makes landfall in Mrs Merkel’s own constituency 選區. It has fallen to others, principally France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, to make the case for Europe to do more.

馬克宏取而代之 梅克爾, 發揮對歐洲影響力

Which German candidate, though, could do better than Mrs Merkel? The polls suggest that Germany is set for a messy new parliament, with no single party, or even two, able to form a government. Instead, some sort of ideologically incoherent three-way coalition is on the cards—one that, by combining high-spending greens and pro-business liberals, may struggle to agree on anything ambitious.

This is another symptom of Merkelian complacency 自滿得意. Comfortable, cautious Germans seem uninterested in serious debate about the future. Crisis-management has become a substitute for initiative. Candidates have no incentive to highlight their country’s looming problems. The result has been one of the least substantive campaigns for decades: all about the horse-race and not about the issues.

這麼迫在眉睫, 用 Horse race 形容 

The tug from the left

Are they right, though? There are reasons to hope so, but also plenty to fear. Mr Scholz has been an effective finance minister. The German people trust him. He is better placed than a CDU chancellor would be to work with the Greens on climate change. The problem is that although he belongs to the business-friendly wing of his party, the SPD is stuffed with left-wingers. They may try to drag him further in their direction than the Free Democrats will wear and enterprise can comfortably bear.