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SOURCE: POLITICO-AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS
German conservatives are desperate to avoid a three-party coalition, but the outcome depends on how many small parties enter parliament.
The question is not who will be Germany’s next chancellor, but which rivals they will govern with.
So while we are pretty sure that Friedrich Merz’s conservatives will be in charge – according to polls, their triumph seems almost inevitable – that’s just the beginning of the story, because Germany’s political system almost always requires a coalition of parties.
And while the overall winner of the February 23 election is fairly predictable, the composition of the coalition remains completely uncertain.
Merz’s Christian Democratic Alliance – the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union – now has support of around 30 percent, far ahead of all other parties. The Social Democrats and the Greens are expected to win around 16 and 13 percent of the vote, respectively.
In second place, with just over 20 percent, is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), but all other parties have rejected the possibility of working with them.
According to politicians from Mercosur’s party, their least desirable scenario would be a three-party coalition because of the internal conflicts that would inevitably ensue. An unstable alliance would be reminiscent of the problems of the previous government – led by the Social Democrats with the liberals from the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens – whose collapse in December ended with these snap elections.
As with all possible scenarios, much depends on the relative proportions of the votes won. Everything is still open.
If the center-right and center-left achieve a good result – a “grand coalition” (GroKo)
A “grand coalition” or Große Koalition (GroKo for short) is one of the classic models of government in Germany, bringing together conservatives and social democrats. Germany has been led by a GroKo four times since 1949, and three times under former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
However, the conservatives have moved significantly to the right under Merck, which makes future compromises with the social democrats more difficult.
“It won’t be easy after the elections,” Merck said this week, without specifying whether he would prefer to work with the SPD or the Greens.
He then mentioned a man who, as he said, “has shown impressively” how to negotiate: Boris Rhein, the current premier of the German state of Hesse and a member of the CDU.
After winning the 2023 regional elections, Rhein skillfully played between the SPD and the Greens. In the end, he opted for the Social Democrats, who were reportedly more flexible and willing to compromise.
In recent weeks, Merz has often mentioned Hesse as a model for a future coalition. At the national level, the SPD is also expected to be more lenient – especially on tougher anti-immigration measures, one of Merz’s key promises.
However, the post-election rapprochement is likely to lead to a reshuffle within the SPD. Although current Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already ruled out serving in a cabinet under Merz, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and party leader Lars Klingerbühl, both centrists in the SPD, are expected to take on a larger role.
If the Greens do well and the others don’t – a “kiwi coalition”
Three of Germany’s 16 federal states currently run coalitions of conservatives and Greens – sometimes called “kiwi coalitions” – but such an alliance at the national level would be unprecedented.
On the policy front, there is overlap in the areas of foreign policy and defense spending, with both parties criticizing Scholz for his indecisiveness in supporting Ukraine. However, their positions on migration are diametrically opposed: while Merck has promised to close Germany’s borders on his first day in office, the Greens see such plans as illegal.
The gap widened further last week when Merck said he was prepared to push through parliamentary proposals to restrict migration even with the support of the AfD. The move has weakened Germany’s so-called “wall” against the far right and sparked a fierce election debate that strikes at the heart of post-World War II German identity.
In addition, Markus Söder, the charismatic and vocal leader of the Bavarian conservatives, has long ruled out a coalition with the Greens.
The party is therefore expected to serve primarily as a bargaining chip for the conservatives in talks with the SPD.
If the small parties do well – a three-party coalition
Although post-war Germany has little experience with coalitions of more than two parties (Scholz’s now-failed three-party coalition of 2021 was the first such in more than six decades), political fragmentation and the end of the dominance of two large parties could make such arrangements the new norm.
In fact, a three-party coalition could be inevitable if two of the three smaller parties currently in parliament – the Greens, the FDP and the Left – manage to stay in.
In that case, the most likely options would be:
– the so-called “German coalition” (CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP)
– or (less likely) the “Kenyan coalition” (CDU/CSU, SPD and the Greens) – called so because the colors of these parties correspond to the black, red, and green of the Kenyan flag.
The general view among the parties is that such a scenario – while perhaps necessary – would be highly undesirable, as the sharp ideological differences between them would predestinate the next government to conflict, just like the previous one.
