To analyse. A year after their debacle in the general elections, the German conservatives are back. At the Bundestag on Wednesday September 7, then at his party’s congress two days later in Hanover, the President of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, severely attacked the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) , accusing him of “not respecting its commitments”to govern with blows of “small compromises aimed only at holding [sa] alliance » and miss everything political and strategic thinking. “While the crisis demands firm leadership and a clear course, our country is allowing itself to have one of the weakest governments in its history”regretted Mr. Merz.
Until then, the leader of the conservatives had been rather conciliatory with Olaf Scholz. On February 27, he applauded the Chancellor when the latter, three days after the invasion of Ukraine, announced to MPs his intention to invest 100 billion euros to modernize the Bundeswehr. And on June 3, his support had been decisive in enabling the government to obtain the two-thirds majority in the Bundestag necessary for the constitutional revision paving the way for the adoption of this “special fund” unprecedented.
Promise of a “warm autumn”
Recent statements by Mr. Merz show that the time for leniency is over. Facing him, Olaf Scholz will now have to rely on a resolute opposition. That of the conservatives but also that of the two parties located at each end of the parliamentary arc, Die Linke, on the left, and Alternative for Germany (AfD), on the right. Determined, too, to get up after their poor scores in the legislative elections, these parties promise a “warm autumn” to the government, against which they plan to organize a series of demonstrations.
Faced with these headwinds, Olaf Scholz does not intend to relent. In the Bundestag on September 7, he responded to Friedrich Merz’s indictment with unusual firmness, believing that he had no lessons to learn from the party which led the government from 2005 to 2021, particularly in terms of energy policy. ” The CDU is entirely responsible for the fact that Germany decided to phase out coal and nuclear”said Olaf Scholz, accusing the party of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel of having been “unable to develop renewable energies”. So many decisions of which we can now measure how much they have “damaged our country”he added.
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