If they voted tomorrow, the Germans would lead at the chancellery, for the first time in their history, a Green politician. On the contrary a green politics: Annalena Baerbock, only a few days ago chosen by Alleanza 90/I Verdi, as the party is officially called, to run in the September elections for the renewal of Parliament. This was revealed by the latest survey by the Forsa Institute, considered authoritative and reliable, although it deals with opinions that can change from one day to the next.
According to Forsa, therefore, the Greens would reach 28% of votes while the Conservatives of Cdu-Csu, they would collapse to 21% and the Social Democrats of SPD would plummet to 13%. The poll was carried out two days after the choice of Annalena Baerbock by the Greens, and 24 hours after that of her main opponent, the Christian Democrat Armin Laschet. The result demonstrates two things. The first: Germany is ready to go beyond the mourning for the loss of their adored "Mutti", Angela Merkel, who on September 26, when we vote, will not be in the match. The second: to go further, the Germans are also ready to make revolutionary choices.
Will it go like this? Is there anything that will stop the run of the Greens? We asked Angelo Bolaffi, a political philosopher and one of Germany's greatest connoisseurs, former director of the Italian cultural institute in Berlin.
"Covid is the main enemy of the Greens", suggest.
The Covid? Again?
“The great unknown – reflects the Germanist – is certainly the outcome of the battle against Covid”.
How will Germany (and all of Europe) get out of it in five months? At the moment it trudges, like all other European countries, between thousands of infections a day (30 thousand in the last twenty-four hours) and closures of activities to protect its citizens from contagion. Also vaccinations follow the same slow trend, having received the first dose just over 17% of the population (in Italy just over 16%). But the war on the virus is still ongoing. “And if Merkel manages to harness it – is Bolaffi's reasoning – everything will come downhill, she entering history without ever being defeated; and her party, therefore Laschet, victorious in the polls ”.
It is true – recalls Bolaffi – all the German chancellors (or almost) “have entered history, but it is equally true that all, at the time of leaving, suffered crushing defeats. Think for example of Adenauer, who was one of the builders of the European edifice; or, a Brandt, inventor of Ostpolitik, the policy of rapprochement to the USSR; oa cabbage, the unifier of the two Germanys. Withdrew from the scene, their party lost the elections. You know, as the farmers say, nothing grows under a big tree”.
And if things don't go like this, if Merkel's party wins again, Bolaffi reflects, “it will have been quite a miracle because the sixteen years of her government have not exactly been rosy. Merkel was the chancellor of major crises, has been able to overcome them with flexibility and shrewdness. Starting from economic one of 2008, which opened a huge rift between the states of Northern Europe and those of the South, between those who had followed the rules and had not gotten into debt and those who had circumvented them. A rift that was also moral and risked bringing down the whole scaffolding of the European system. And then the immigrant crisis – recalls Bolaffi – a mine for the whole Union, once again divided between the Mediterranean countries, which first had to face the wave of poor souls fleeing all wars and all conflicts, and those far from the mare Nostrum, who turned a deaf ear in the face of tragedy”.
But the most difficult of all trials – Bolaffi continues to reflect – was certainly “the one that Merkel found herself experiencing in her home, the growth crisis of your country within Europe, for a new role for Germany and for Europe itself, once the two powers, the USSR and the USA, had collapsed. Novella Bismarck, she found herself faced with the imperative not only to concretely unify Germany, but Europe. He more or less did the first thing, the second he leaves to whoever will succeed him. Because even with Merkel, Germany was reluctant, as some have defined it, to take on the role of weight and leadership that it deserves within the European Union, indispensable for the Old Continent in turn to assume its own. A legitimate fear probably raised by the shadows of the old ghosts. Shadows appeared inside and outside the borders, especially after the unification that made it the strongest and most populous European country, with almost 84 million inhabitants. And also the richest, being the per capita GDP of the Germans of 52.558 euros against the 41.433 of the Italians or the 45.775 of the French”.
Today, however, these fears are meaningless, explains Bolaffi, “because Germany is Europe and Europe cannot exist without Germany. The latest proof was given by the German Constitutional Court which rejected the appeal of the Afd, the right-wing extremists, against the Recovery plan, because it is not true that the European plan is against German interests. In other words, the European recovery plan coincides with that of Germany: a big step forward”.
And if so, which of the two, then: the Christian Democrat Laschet, who reassures continuity, or the green Baerbock, who frees the imagination, will be able to be the King Arthur of this sort of 27-member Round Table that is Europe? Here the choice between heart and head becomes difficult.
According to Bolaffi, who knows the Greens very closely, being also a member of the Federation Heinrich Boell, theirs think tanks international organization that studies environmental policies, “if Annalena appears to be a very strong choice in internal politics, for the social as well as environmental vision, his party's victory could have not always positive repercussions in foreign policy. It is true, Baerbock, an expert in law and economics, is pragmatic and realist, just like Merkel. But some positions of the Greens, such as the one you foresee the blockage of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which carries gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, avoiding Ukraine, would certainly please the Americans, but it would make relations with Moscow even more difficult”.
As for the Christian Democrats, Bolaffi continues, “their champion Laschet, president of the Land Rhineland Westphalia, a journalist by training, does not make German hearts beat faster, however reassures abroad precisely for continuity with Merkel's policy.
And so, in the end, at the table, what should we expect to happen in September? Bolaffi agrees to play, despite knowing that nothing can be drawn at the table, let alone predict what will happen in the polls. And he chooses the most reasonable way: “Government with the Greens, but chancellor at the CDU-CSU. For Laschet to continue Merkel's work and, without jolts, increasingly hold the European scepter. Unless… Unless Germany (and therefore Europe) you're just not looking for that jolt, which only a deeply pro-European, strongly environmentalist and progressive force can give.
And if that happened, we bet that the pragmatic Annalena would find a way to smooth out the most dangerous edges. As a rule, women are more flexible than men”.
