Germany’s deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has warned not to take for granted German financial and political stability in the face of a global wave of authoritarian populism.
In normal times Mr Gabriel, the Social Democrat (SPD) leader and federal economic minister, could coast into next September’s parliamentary election on the back of dream data: almost 2 per cent growth, the lowest jobless rate (6 per cent) since unification in 1990 and a balanced budget he credits to €20 billion saved in interest thanks to the ECB.
“We in Germany are on a kind of idyllic island but it won’t stay this way,” said Mr Gabriel to foreign journalists in Berlin.
“There is a general feeling of insecurity . . . and a new world order where liberal and social democracies are more on the defensive, and authoritarian answers are on the offensive.”
He lists off names such as Trump, Putin and Erdogan, then adds Berlin’s Danish, Dutch and French neighbours.
And what of Germany, where double digit support for the far-right populist Alternative Für Deutschland (AfD) scared Chancellor Angela Merkel this week into a political pivot, symbolically at least, to the right?
“Compared to that the participation of right-wing populism in Germany is annoying but relatively small - whether it stays that way we will see,” he said, arguing that aping far-right AfD populism will only benefit the populists.
Drift to fringes
The leader of the SPD - flat-lining on 23 per cent, 10 points behind Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats - says today’s challenge is to pull back those who have drifted to the political fringes in the hope of attracting greater attention there from the political mainstream.
Mr Gabriel knows first hand the difficulty of separating legitimate voter concerns from irrational xenophobic angst after dismissing supporters of Germany’s anti-Islam Pegida movement as “rabble” – a label Pegida members now wear with pride.
The big challenge for European social democracy, he says, lies in reconnecting with its traditional worker base. How? By addressing what makes them mad, he says: a US tech company based in Dublin paying a lower tax rate on profits than a Berlin backer. Or challenging a deep-rooted neo-liberalism that he says permeates EU institutions.
Last week, Mr Gabriel called for a new social pillar to be installed alongside existing EU fundamental freedoms of movement for labour, capital and services.
To do so, the SPD leader is open to sacrificing a few of Germany’s sacred cows, dumping fiscal austerity in favour of EU fiscal flexibility in the case of public investment programmes.
On Europe’s most pressing problems, Mr Gabriel favours keeping Britain “as close as politically possible”, while Italy, he says, is a “political problem that, economically, causes us no big concerns”.
Grand coalition
So will Mr Gabriel help usher in a new social Europe next year, by pulling the plug on his grand coalition with Angela Merkel for a three-way SPD-Green-Left coalition?
As he spoke on Thursday in his economics ministry, just such an alliance was taking office 4km south in Berlin’s city-state parliament.
Mr Gabriel and his SPD colleagues are dubious of such an alliance at federal level – one calls it a “stopgap” – given leading Left politicians’ strident anti-Nato, eurosceptic views.
While promising change, Mr Gabriel refuses to reveal before January whether he will take on Angela Merkel in the 2017 elections, or defer to one of two front-runners: departing EU parliament president Martin Schulz or Hamburg governor Olaf Scholz.
Whoever runs, he said, will vow to keep Germany as a stability anchor in Europe.
“Anyone who wants to have something to say politically in the world,” he said, “has to take care of the European Union.”
