The fenced-off building site in central Berlin says everything you need to know about Germany in advance of Sunday’s federal election.
Between the river Spree and the rebuilt Prussian palace, a stone plinth about 10 metres long is the only visible part of Germany’s central monument to its own unification, 35 years ago. Politicians voted for the memorial 18 years ago and the structure was supposed to be completed in 2020. But a lengthy legal row means the memorial is still missing its crowning feature: a large shell-like metal structure that will rest on the plinth and shift as visitors walk around on it.
If people act together they can make big things happen – that is the artistic concept. For now, though, Germany’s memorial to people power is a silent monument to the country’s standstill.
“It really captures where we are as a country,” says Thomas, a 66-year-old Berliner, peering through the fence. “Nothing is happening, everyone is embarrassed, no one feels responsible and – all the while – a bad feeling is growing.”
On Sunday, 59.2 million German voters are called to choose a new Bundestag parliament at a time of unprecedented domestic and international tensions. As Ukraine’s future hangs in the balance, the White House and billionaire Elon Musk have intervened in the campaign to – implicitly and explicitly – endorse Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD). At least one in five voters plans to back the AfD, likely making it the second-largest party in the new Bundestag.
Germany’s postwar political landscape is being redrawn but other parties’ refusal to work with the AfD will complicate post-election coalition talks. They are likely to be led by the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), leading with 30 per cent in polls.
Its lanky chairman, Friedrich Merz (69), is on course to become chancellor as head of another grand coalition with the centre-right Social Democrats (SPD), facing a historical election disaster with just 15 per cent support.
Merz has had a long wait for power – 36 years and counting – and, as European politics shifts rightward, the CDU has framed its conservative, economic liberal chairman in campaign posters as “the right person at the right time”.
Merz told supporters this week that “the economic substance of our country is at stake”. “We will turn economic policy upside down again, we want to improve conditions for everyone,” he said of a party programme that promises economic stimulus by cutting the tax burden – and social spending.
Merz remains a divisive figure, attracting standing ovations inside campaign venues and protests outside after he rammed a tough migration motion through the Bundestag with AfD support, shattering a postwar taboo. But he insists that his political “firewall” to the AfD remains intact.
SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz, still hoping for a last-minute miracle, spent the final days of campaigning hoping to woo undecide voters with warnings of a post-election CDU-AfD alliance. “There has long been a consensus in Germany not to co-operate with far-right parties,” he said, “and that has to still apply in the future.”
The biggest wild card in Sunday’s election remains the final result for the migration-critical, Russian-friendly AfD. It has promised mass deportations of criminal foreigners, as well as tax cuts. It wants to get Germany back into nuclear energy and out of the EU. “We are experiencing a political paradigm shift,” said Alice Weidel, AfD lead candidate, days after meeting US vice-president JD Vance in Munich. “We need to rethink how we do things and tear down political firewalls.”
Fears about firewalls haven’t distracted voters from Scholz’s mixed record after 3½ turbulent years in power, buffeted by the fallout of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
Germany’s battle against rising food and energy prices has absorbed much of the capacity intended for the so-called “traffic light” coalition’s promised “green, progressive transformation” of the German economy. That plan may have been doomed anyway, given the built-in fiscal contradictions of the Scholz SPD’S three way alliance with the Greens and liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
But that all paled next to the historic “watershed” speech, a day after the Russian invasion in 2022. In it, Scholz announced a €100 billion investment fund for the German army and taboo-shattering arms deliveries to Ukraine worth, to date, about €15 billion. That support has not stretched to all lethal weapons, however, and Scholz has consistently refused to send cruise missiles for fear of escalating the conflict into a wider war.
His balancing act on Ukraine retreated in recent months as Scholz tried to correct Germany’s decade-old open-border policy, in particular a huge deportation backlog of failed asylum seekers. After a series of violent attacks, Scholz promised in October 2023 unwanted arrivals would be “deported en masse”.
Critics say his failure to deliver has been spectacular – and deadly. Since last May, 10 Germans have been killed and many dozens injured in attacks in the cities of Mannheim, Solingen, Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg and Munich. In all cases the suspects were foreign nationals, and in three of four cases the attackers were failed asylum seekers with overdue deportation orders. “Don’t you share a moral responsibility for every death to date?” a tearful woman from Solingen asked an ashen-faced Scholz in a televised debate last week.
Shock over the attacks has provided a campaign boost for the AfD, which has tapped immigration fears and frustration with the Scholz coalition to double its support since 2021 to 21 per cent.
That focus means there has been no debate on climate targets and only muted discussion on how to revive – and retool – Europe’s largest economy.
[ The fall and fall of Germany’s liberal Free DemocratsOpens in new window ]
With no end in sight to the downturn, small business closures are gathering pace, including Mälzer, Berlin’s longest-established baker. A 33 per cent rise since 2021 in the cost of a simple bread roll has throttled trade and prompted Klaus Mälzer to close his family-owned firm after 125 years. “It’s sad because they were wonderful years,” said the bearded 75-year-old, “but we’ve been hit hard by the rising raw materials and energy prices”.
At the other end of Germany’s business spectrum, big listed companies are shifting investment abroad while automotive giant VW is braced for carmagdeddon. Its profits dropped 60 per cent last year and unsold VWs clog up car parks around the country. Meanwhile sales are down a third since 2020 in its key China market, as locals turn to domestic brands.
Threatened 25 per cent tariffs on European car imports to the US would hit VW and its German rivals hard, given they supply 73 per cent of the total. Mexican-produced VWs, previously 40 per cent of the company’s US sales, have already been hit with 25 per cent tariff.
Given all that, leading German economists are in despair at the country’s current state – and the lack of debate about how Germany plans to secure its prosperity in the future.
“What the political parties are offering are focused on the short term,” said Prof Marcel Fratzscher of Berlin’s influential DIW economic think tank. “But what we need is a vision of how we can protect the successes of the last 70 years and build on that. We have to invest in the future.”
Investing in the future is a big ask in a country that, for years, has prioritised balanced budgets over investing even in the present.
For the last five months, a concrete example of this thinking and its consequences has been lying in pieces in the river Elbe, two hours south of Berlin. The eastern city of Dresden had a lucky escape last September 11th when, just after 3am, half of the city’s busy Carola Bridge collapsed. It was empty and no one was injured but, this week, sensors were triggered on the surviving half of the East German-era reinforced concrete bridge from 1971. Its collapse may be imminent and, like road traffic above, local authorities have halted all river traffic below – indefinitely.
“This bridge and the river are lifelines for the city but no one knows when a new bridge will come,” fumed Matthias (48), a local man on the riverbank earlier this month. “Now it just lies there, a tourist attraction we never wanted.”
The Carola Bridge is the rule, not the exception, in Germany. A recent study by VDV, the country’s construction industry federation, estimates that Germany’s road, bridge and rail investment backlog lies at ¤372 billion – or 35 times Ireland’s annual budget.
Merz has promised to consider loosening Germany’s so-called “debt brake” in office, to allow greater borrowing for investment. Given huge historic fears of debt and inflation, however, Merz said this would only be possible after significant trims to social spending.
In a country of broken bridges, public order problems and no plan for the future, it’s little wonder the frustration is building among younger German voters.
On a recent train to Leipzig, Christoph (35), a programmer, described how his homeland feels like a company run by managers “who all have two or three years left to retirement and don’t want to complicate their lives. For them there are only benefits, and no cost, to sitting things out,” he said between angry bites of a toasted sandwich.
“But the problems they postpone are growing every year for the rest of us.”
