German streets have been angry places recently.
Farmers’ protests against fuel costs in part turned against the whole government.
Public transport workers keep going on strike.
And more than a million people have been out in the cold to say
NO to extreme right groups getting a foothold in mainstream politics.
By German standards - where stability is sexy - the country appears in inner in turmoil.
A country that seems to be losing confidence in itself.
And its ability to create a brighter future.
For the first time we are seeing a majority of people believe that
Germany is past its prime, that our best years are behind us..
The latest study of Germans’ biggest fears has polled previously unseen
insecurity levels about the future and the ability of the government to shape it.
But Germans are also generally unhappy.
The latest EU survey on life satisfaction, shows that Germans are among the unhappiest
in the bloc - Only Bulgarians are more dissatisfied with their standard of life .
One gets the sense that living here in Germany isn’t really worth it anymore.
All of this is putting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under immense pressure .
At 20% - his popularity has hit the lowest level ever recorded for a serving Chancellor.
Yet instead of a quick fix, Scholz has a tall order for the nation:
That we manage to remain an industrialized country, stay ahead economically with the
most modern technology, and protect the climate at the same time.
The days when Germans could expect all of this to be obvious,
and not cost them anything personally - appear to be over.
Now people are feeling anxious as they brace for change.
So is Germany really doing as badly as many people feel it is?
Or has the status of Europe's biggest economy made Germans
over-sensitive to the growing pains of necessary transition?
When farmers started blocking the streets of Berlin at the end of 2023, over fuel prices,
many city-dwellers seemed to sympathize.
A general fear of cuts was in the air because the government had made a huge mistake.
Scholz’ Cabinet had put 60 billion euros earmarked for pandemic recovery, into the general budget.
Germany’s highest court ruled this was unconstitutional - and
blew a huge hole in the federal budget.
Suddenly Germany was strapped for cash - a feeling that resonated
with many people’s personal experience.
Many people feel they simply can’t cover everything with their money,
and that leads to this dissatisfaction.
I’m pretty shocked that there is such a high level of dissatisfaction.
They’re making savings and everything is getting more expensive for people.
There’s a sense that this immediate discomfort is
a precursor to more fundamental transition coming down the line.
The mood in Germany is very unusual. We haven’t seen anything like it for decades. An extreme
sense of anxiety, over whether Germany is even still good at things it used to be good at.
They are worried about change. Change is never easy, and confronted with a situation where
people say the economic model of the country has to change, a lot of people are nervous.
And they are dissatisfied with the Government:
When Finance Minister Christian Lindner tried to talk with protesting farmers, he was shouted down.
And the opinion polls are looking bad for all three parties that together form the government.
At the end of January, polls put those governing parties, Scholz’s Social Democrats SPD,
the Greens and the pro-business liberal Free Democrat FDP, third, fourth and fifth.
In first place was the Conservative CDU - former chancellor Angela Merkel’s party , followed by the
far right Alternative for Germany, the AfD. They have often been described as a
protest party. Their polling numbers suggest MANY Germans want to protest.
They’re frustrated with their personal situation but also the overall political establishment.
That’s a sentiment that feeds into the narrative of populists around the world.
The link between dissatisfaction and right wing populism is an established pattern.
If anything, Germany is late in reaching the kind of levels of
public dissatisfaction that delivered right wing populists like Donald Trump in the US,
Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban or Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to power.
Germany has been shielded from that extreme polarization, also politically.
And unfortunately is now catching up and it's struggling to deal with that.
The far right AfD has never been stronger.
Nationwide it has reached 20 per cent, making it - as we’ve seen - the second strongest party.
Its leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla have turned it into a
nationwide destination for protest votes.. But then it was revealed that high-level AfD
members took part in a conference planning mass deportations.
For Germany’s center, the echoes of the Nazis were too loud to ignore,
and more than a million protested on one weekend alone.
European Elections in June will show whether the anti-AfD mood will hold,
or if German dissatisfaction is stronger.
So Germans are feeling down about their economy and their future.
They see cuts and rising prices, and on top of that, a resurgent far right.
Let’s look at some data to see whether there’s reason
to worry or whether German Angst is getting the better of German society.
The facts show that Germany still has impressive economic stamina.
It maintains its place as the fourth largest economy in the world.
Germany is doing economically well in absolute terms. It has done very well
over the last 10-15 years. We have record employment.
Unemployment is way below the EU average.
And Germany’s stock market keeps breaking new records:
And yet this doesn’t seem to be trickling down to people on the street
The mood is much worse than the economic and social reality.
Or is it a gut feeling of what’s to come?
Take a look at the predictions for the near future, and the negative
mood doesn’t seem so pessimistic. Of the twenty most influential
economies in the World, Germany has the second worst growth prediction for 2024.
And business confidence is down as well. A key survey of some
9000 German companies is pointing South. Add to that a whole list of challenges:
We know we are facing years with a shrinking workforce.
We know we need change to decarbonize change for climate protection.
We know we need digitization in the health sector and in the economy as a whole.
These are challenges we know we need to invest more into our infrastructure. But
we haven't come up with a convincing plan now to address these issues.
So Germans’ anxiety for the future is NOT all in their heads.
Many expect their personal prosperity to
be challenged - and the data suggests they might be right.
But it’s not all about the economy…
I think that Germany is suffering from a lack of convincing responses to the challenges ahead.
There is a budget hole and taxes increase or subsidies are cut,
These two things create conflicts and disappointments.
Germans want a remedy for the economic pain they fear ahead.
But what’s needed could go beyond what any doctor can prescribe.
Over the pandemic and the crisis over the past two years,
everyone has to come to expect the government to step in and basically guarantee income.
The population gets the message we will shield you from all these crises from
everything that happens. And no government in the
world can meet those expectations.
Germany is already spending around half of the national budget on social issues.
And a debt brake stops the government borrowing any more money.
So Germans cannot expect to be cushioned from the next economic downturn. They have been warned.
We will not be able to secure our prosperity
long-term by simply taking on new debt and distributing the money to businesses.
So if the government can’t find money to throw at
the problem - how might it try to at least reduce people’s anger?
Most would agree that Scholz’s government
is failing to give Germans a sense of where these hard times might lead to.
He told the angry farmers that those cuts would have to come sometime.
If every subsidy remains forever, if we keep to our positions 100 percent, if
we do everything like always, then we won’t move forward.
What he hasn’t done so far is directly talk to the wider public about their fears of a poorer future.
I think it would be necessary to be more honest with people and tell them,
look, we are in a challenging situation.
Instead, his weekly video messages have repeatedly focused on how to tackle the far right.
Let me say it very clearly: Far Right extremists are attacking our democracy.
Never again Dictatorship.
The criticism is mounting.
It is really a problem and a mistake by the government and including the chancellor.
And this is not communicating a vision for the future for the next 5 to 10 years.
That perceived lack of vision is partly due to his lack of room for political maneuver.
The three-way coalition the chancellor is leading,
struggles to get through a whole week without fighting.
The party leaders meet more often to defuse a crisis than to work on future strategies.
I think the government really does have a problem in that it is very divided.
A heating reform that was so badly managed they were forced to scrap it, and not one but TWO
failed budgets have shattered public confidence in their ability to deliver long term policies.
Voters seem to have an appetite for some Real Politik
It’s just gonna be some kind of compromise, unfortunately.
People need to be told what’s coming. That these crises have
an impact and things can’t stay as they are.
Instead of discussing the big issues that are about to hit Germans with a transition
to a greener, more digitized, less labor intensive economy –
Olaf Scholz Coalition, and the people they govern, are stuck in the here and
now and with a government working hard to survive another day in politics.
I would say, Germany needs to focus on its strengths. It’s about creating trust.
Germany is not the sick man of Europe - the situation is not as bad as many people feel it .
But society can also no longer gloss over
the profound changes that are already reshaping its economy.
The coming weeks and months will be crucial for Olaf Scholz to do
more than just hold his coalition together.
He needs to soothe German Angst with a big dose of confidence that he can provide
stability. If he fails, populists may gain even more ground with simplistic promises.