The German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, took a day off campaigning yesterday to spend a little time with his family and catch up on some badly neglected government business.
On the face of it, Dr Kohl is justified in taking a break from the hustings as Germany enters the last week of campaigning for its general election. Weekend opinion polls showed his Christian Democrats (CDU) closing the gap on the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) to just two points, and the trend is in the Chancellor's favour. Dr Kohl's personal ratings are improving, too, so he is now just 12 points behind his challenger, Mr Gerhard Schroder.
Pollsters point out that the SPD often fares less well in elections than in opinion polls, partly because leftwing voters are less reliable than their conservative counterparts. "The Social Democrats have sent new cohorts out against me each time. They sent them out one after the other," the Chancellor crowed in an interview yesterday.
But there is precious little cheer in the Chancellor's camp this week, and his opponents remain remarkably perky in view of their shrinking poll lead. Even within Dr Kohl's closest circle, it is hard to find anyone who believes he will still be Chancellor after Sunday's election.
Although the polls show his party improving, Dr Kohl's coalition partners in the neo-liberal Free Democrats (FDP) are struggling to win the crucial 5 per cent of votes needed to take seats in the Bundestag. In 1994 the governing coalition won only 143,000 votes more than the combined opposition. It is extremely unlikely that it will retain its majority on Sunday.
The SPD will spend the next six days focusing on just seven constituencies in the east of Germany which the party believes hold the key to the shape of the next government. If the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) polls well enough to enter the Bundestag and the FDP scrapes past the 5 per cent hurdle, the SPD's hopes of forming a coalition with the Greens could be dashed. ?????????SPD oder's strategists hope to persuade easterners that the best way of ousting Dr Kohl is through the SPD and that a vote for the ex-communists is wasted.
The decision of a handful of voters in the east could have important consequences for Europe and the rest of the world. The next German chancellor will face a succession of diplomatic challenges during the next year that will help shape the European, transatlantic and global agendas for the 21st century.
Germany occupies the presidency of the European Union for the first six months of next year, when member-states must decide how to balance the ambition to expand the EU with their determination to deepen political and economic integration.
As economic problems proliferate throughout the world, the introduction of the euro may not fulfil all the hopes of its proponents in boosting economic growth and creating jobs. Euro teething troubles would put the new European Central Bank to the test and highlight differences between France and Germany over how the bank should be run.
Although Mr Schroder insists that the euro must be as strong as the deutschmark, he could prove more amenable to French demands for more political influence on the bank's decisions. Mr Oskar Lafontaine, the SPD chairman and the man most likely to guide economic policy in a new, centre-left government, favours fixed exchange rates between the euro, the dollar and the yen and greater intervention in the market to boost employment.
A Social Democratic chancellor would be well placed to strengthen links with Britain without threatening the paramount status of the Franco-German relationship. With centre-left governments in Bonn, Paris and London, there would be a new impetus to work together in the fight against Europe's unemployment. The end of the Kohl era could also make it easier to harmonise EU laws on immigration and asylum.
If Brussels is relaxed about a change of government in Germany, many in Washington will be praying for a miracle that will keep Dr Kohl in power. The Chancellor has been a staunch ally of the US throughout his 16 years in power, defying public opposition to nuclear missiles on German soil, supporting the Gulf War and taking political risks to enable German soldiers to play a bigger role in United Nations peacekeeping operations. In a speech at Georgetown University recently, Mr Schroder promised continuity in foreign policy and declared that the US and Europe form "an indispensable partnership for the 21st century".
But SPD insiders admit that a Schroder government would be more self-assured and aggressive in the defence of German interests, even if that meant exchanging sharp words with Washington over such differences as the NATO command structure and policy towards Iran.
Regardless of who wins Sunday's election, Germany itself will change with next year's move of the capital from provincial Bonn to metropolitan Berlin. With its seat of government halfway between Paris and Moscow, and less than an hour's drive from the Polish border, Germany will view Europe from a different perspective.
Most speculation about the election presumes that the next government will be led by either Dr Kohl or Mr Schroder. But the former insists that he will resign if the present coalition fails to win a majority and the latter oder will not go to Bonn except as chancellor. If the CDU emerges as the largest party but is forced into a grand coalition with the SPD, neither of the two current candidates would become chancellor.
The job would almost certainly go to Wolfgang Schauble, the intellectually formidable parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrats. Such an outcome would please the German public, who like both Mr Schauble and grand coalitions, but it would send diplomats in Paris, Brussels and Washington rushing back to the drawing board.
