STATE ELECTION:CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel is facing a crucial test of her authority tomorrow as her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) struggles to retain power in its political stronghold.
Amid devastating domestic reviews for her EU rescue deal and claims of electioneering over nuclear energy fears, a final poll suggests the CDU cannot continue in office with its Free Democrat (FDP) coalition partners in the southwestern state of BadenWürttemberg.
After nearly half a century in power, the party’s only hope may be a coalition with one of two unloved rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD) or the Greens.
Nearly eight million voters in Germany’s second-largest state were expected to elect their first-ever state premier from the Green Party, after it rode a protest wave over nuclear energy and unpopular plans to redevelop Stuttgart’s main train station.
But final poll figures suggest the Greens may fall just short of the support they need for a deal with the SPD.
Dr Merkel’s final hope was that yesterday’s permanent euro zone solidarity-austerity package agreed in Brussels will go down well in Baden-Württemberg, the prosperous home of Porsche and the thrifty Swabian housewife.
"We've achieved a huge, huge amount since [the Greek crisis] a year ago," she said. "The euro zone members have grown from the crisis and taken the necessary consequences." But conservative analysts have been scathing of Dr Merkel's summit strategy, with the influential Frankfurter Allgemeinenewspaper calling agreement on the €700 billion permanent rescue fund the latest in a "series of broken promises" around the euro.
“Dr Merkel said the permanent crisis fund would only come about if European economic policy followed German principles,” it remarked, accusing her first of lying, then of conceding on every strategic point.
“The ‘competitiveness pact’ with which she shocked her partners now contains enough hot air to make it non-binding . . . the stability pact has one or two teeth more but has, at the end of the day, as little bite as before.”
Losing power in Baden-Württemberg would not just be a humiliation for the German leader, it would be a disaster with uncertain political consequences.
Scraping back into power could force the departure of state CDU leader Stefan Mappus, a bullish conservative who enjoyed a modest lead in a campaign dominated by local issues – until the Japanese earthquake two weeks ago.
One of the CDU’s loudest nuclear advocates, he could yet become the world’s first political casualty of Fukushima after performing an eye-watering U-turn on nuclear energy.
“I see myself as having a particular responsibility to discuss the future of our energy supply without taboos because I was particularly engaged for extending the life of nuclear plants,” he said after Berlin forced a three-month shutdown of ageing nuclear plants, including some in his state – six months after the CDU saved them from closure.
He insisted the move was about “responsibility, not electioneering”. Unfortunately for him, nearly two-thirds of voters disagreed, while a Merkel cabinet minister reportedly admitted the move was an election stunt at a private meeting with industry leaders.
The untold damage that late revelation caused made Dr Merkel more determined to force nuclear plant safety inspections on to the busy Brussels summit agenda.
“We’ve drawn the lesson from the Japanese accidents at Fukushima to carry out unanimous stress tests,” Dr Merkel told reporters yesterday. However, she got less than she hoped for: the non-compulsory tests will be carried out by national governments, with no clear plan if any plant fails the tests.
Dr Merkel returned to Germany yesterday facing a double dilemma in Baden-Württemberg: floating voters are increasingly worried about nuclear power and sceptical of the CDU’s newfound nuclear concern.
Meanwhile, core CDU voters may stay at home, incensed that Dr Merkel has, as they see it, sacrificed the party’s pro-nuclear consensus in a reactionary and populist election stunt.
“She had to do something after Japan but many of her voters thought it was an overreaction,” sad Prof Gerd Langguth, a political scientist in Bonn and Merkel biographer.