Germany has been traumatised by the school shootings in Erfurt last week. The tragedy has now been invoked as an issue in the federal election campaign, with the interior minister, Mr Otto Schily, saying calls for tougher gun laws are being exploited by his conservative opponents.
Whatever about that there can be no denying Germany has to face up to an alarming trend of such mass killings, which started in the United States and spread toDunblane in Scotland and to Switzerland. The poignant question "Why?", inscribed on a placard outside the school yesterday, will take a long time to answer in policy terms. But it underlines how important concerns about security have become for voters, and for parents and children. In Germany, as in Ireland and France, the issue is at the top of the election agenda.
The election campaign in Germany is well under way by now, even though voting is not until September 29th. It has now become bound up with the country's stance on European affairs. Last night the chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroeder, had dinner in Brussels with the Commission president, Mr Romano Prodi and several key commissioners. They have been feuding in public about what Mr Schroeder says are Commission policies which damage German interests, including environmental and competitive directives leading to corporate takeovers and buyouts. He is being harassed by the Christian Democrat candidate, Mr Edmund Stoiber, on such issues and has tended to lash out in opportunist fashion against Brussels to make his points.
Observers detect shifts in the pattern of leadership traditionally expected from the Franco-German axis in the EU as the election campaigns proceed in both countries. How much of this is to do with a coincident election year, and how much expresses a longer term trend, it is too soon to say. But there is certainly a common resentment about the Commission's role between these two large states, of which smaller EU members must take due account. In addition there is the possibility that both of them could swing towards the right in the next few months. Mr Stoiber appeared quite confident of victory when he visited Brussels recently, insisting he would have a more consistent EU policy than Mr Schroeder. We will hear much more of this in coming months.