The year 2023 that has just passed confirmed that
Germany is the great sick person in Europe
.
The largest and most important power in the European Union of 27 countries, fourth in the world, has concluded with a disappointing -0.3% of its economic performance and the most optimistic note that
in 2024 only a meager positive result could be recorded
in around 1.2%.
As the government of Social Democratic Premier Olaf Scholz is increasingly unpopular and polls reveal that the future is one of greater wear and tear, the concrete specter of a dangerous growth of the extreme right offers a dramatic future that is spreading throughout the continent.
These days the country is disturbed by thousands of tractors that parade through the cities, loaded with
farmers protesting because the center-left government has taken away tax benefits from them
.
In Berlin, the capital, the commotion was significant.
In other cities there were also important concentrations, which continued, and recorded the very active presence of extreme right movements and parties.
The most feared is Alternative for Germany (AFD).
Born in 2013 as a political force against the increase in immigration.
At some protests, speakers from
the most feared right in a nation that was ruined by Adolf Hitler's regime almost 80 years ago
, some far-right speakers did not avoid anti-foreign arguments and the vindication of German racial character.
German farmers brought their tractors to the center of Berlin in rejection of the cut in tax benefits.
Photo: REUTERS
"National identity" and expulsion of immigrants
In the mobilization of Alternative for Germany in the protests in support of peasants, a special
emphasis was noted on the ultramontanes suspected of having overtones of Nazi ideology
.
The leader of Altervnativa, Aliicia Weidell, evoked the initiatives to defend national identity.
She raised chills because there is an initiative to create a State in North Africa where up to two million immigrants would be sent.
A campaign is growing that demands early general elections that would sink the “traffic light” government, so called because it results from an alliance between Social Democrats (red), Liberals (white) and Greens.
A survey indicates that 55% of those surveyed are in favor of calling voters to the polls in this country of 83 million inhabitants where
discontent is growing
.
Analysts are sure that the government will not consign itself to a likely negative vote.
But the weakness of the “traffic light” may reflect wear and tear in the Bundestag, Parliament, and open the floodgates to negotiations between parties at the parliamentary level.
Germany is a federal country where the authorities are elected by the Chambers of deputies and senators.
In June there will be elections in the European Parliament that will serve in the 28 member countries to measure the balance of forces at the national level.
The right is pushing to make way for an unprecedented change
, which eliminates the alliances that have always governed the European Union.
Historically, it is the alliance between conservatives, centrists and socialists that dominates, claiming liberal democracy.
Leaders and followers of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AFD), during an event, in 2018. Photo: AP
Political storms
A significant advance by the right would open a period of political turbulence fueled by economic stagnation.
The event that is already shaking up the German panorama are the elections in three states in the east of the country: Saxony, Branderburg and Thuringia.
In all three the Alliance for Germany predominates, with 28%, which some polls raise to 30%.
In addition to the three official parties, at center stage is the CDI/CDU bloc, with a centrist Catholic matrix, which is the leading national political force.
This historic bloc that has ruled for many years is isolated.
It was displaced by the alternative of agreements between socialists, liberals and greens.
As they all sometimes governed together, the difficult reality would favor a reunion with the Christian centrists, who measure around 35% of the votes, with a good time in their Bavarian fortress.
The unpopularity problems of the “traffic light” government spread a
destabilizing wave
that goes far beyond the confines of Germany, penetrating the partners of the 27 million allies that are members of the European Union.
They who bear the damage of a Germany that has ceased to be the protagonist of the economic and social “miracle”, to already suffer two recessions after going through a deep crisis due to the Covid pandemic, which punished the German health and economy in 2021-2022.
After the long government of the Christian Democrat Angela Merkel, which most Germans remember with nostalgia, many Germans even angrily evoke that recent, but seemingly distant, era of global respect for Merkel combined with a time of great economic and social development. .
They have now experienced (like the rest of Europe)
the return of inflation that is being tamed
.
At the popular level, many have suffered the loss of purchasing power and the increase in unemployment.
A march against the advance of the far right in Hamburg, Germany, this Friday.
Photo: AP
After the Covid pandemic, unemployment has decreased to 8.1 million workers in the manufacturing sector.
The number of small businesses that form a very important support to the economy has also been reduced.
In 2023, the sale and purchase of commercial properties was reduced by half and house prices also recorded a drop in the real estate sector of 1.5%.
LBut almost 60% of Germans consider their position to be good.
Only 10% judge it negatively.
But in the highly prestigious ZDF survey, those who judge the country's economic situation to be good reach only 14%.
The government, with popularity on the decline
Two out of three citizens support the “traffic light” coalition in power. The three ruling parties together gather 30% of popular support and according to the latest polls, 79% of Germans are dissatisfied with the government itself.
Last year the industry, which represents 20% of national activity, contracted 2% with significant falls in the chemical and metallurgical sectors that had suffered greatly from the crisis that left Germany without the energy that Russian gas pipelines provided to following the war with Ukraine.
Galloping inflation that reached 6.5% in 2022 in a Europe that lived with zero inflation for years, slowing domestic demand and exports affected by the 2021-2022 global crisis.
Official Ruth Brand said that in 2023 “prices remained high in all phases of the economic process and slowed growth.”
The crisis has increased the increasing demand for
bankruptcy
by industrial companies.
In the European Union,
fear is growing that Germany's difficulties will have repercussions on the rest of the continent
and that hopes for the beginning of a cycle of lowering interest rates remain frozen.
State aid from the European Union to its members reached 742 billion euros.
Germany received 360 billion.
The Union's Commissioner for the Economy, former Italian Prime Minister Filippo Gentiloni, explained that in the third quarter of 2013 there were “twelve countries in the Union with negative growth and thirteen with very low growth”, in total 25 nations on a total of 28.
Italians are worried because Germany is the first market for the peninsula's exports.
In 2022 the exchange between both nations reached 168 billion euros.
German weakness could infect Italian industries that are more integrated into global value chains.
C.B.