Out of its time: Germany’s ominous election campaign

Travel in any cardinal direction is possible from Berlin’s main train station: north to Denmark and Sweden; west to France and the low countries; south to the Czech Republic and Austria; east to Poland and, beyond, Ukraine. It is a steel-and-glass proclamation, in the reunified capital’s government district, of Germany’s return to the heart of Europe. More than that, it symbolises the longstanding political fact that European initiatives, compromises and deals crisscrossing the continent typically need to pass through Berlin sooner or later.

In recent years, however, the federal republic has functioned less as a European hub than as an obstacle to be circumvented. On February 23rd the country holds an election triggered by the premature demise of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fractious tripartite coalition in November. The vote begs the question: is German leadership about to make a comeback? While the campaign has revealed the likely identity of Scholz’s successor—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)’s Friedrich Merz—the answer to that question remains wide open.

Burden of the hegemon

Scholz’s “traffic-light coalition” of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and the centre-right Free Democrats could claim some notable European achievements. Under its leadership, Germany became the continent’s primary supporter of Ukraine, launched the air-defence European Sky Shield Initiative and advanced welcome proposals for EU reform—all unthinkable back in 2021 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At points, however, Germany under the traffic light has also been variously unreliable, absent and unpredictable.

This self-marginalisation is not entirely new. Even under Angela Merkel the country’s willingness to lead often kicked in late in crises, or was missing entirely; for example, in short-sighted decisions like approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or declining to take up French president Emmanuel Macron’s offer of partnership for closer EU integration.

But the process has accelerated under Scholz’s government. Its Europe policies have become associated with the “German vote”—successive German abstentions in the EU caused by disagreements among the three coalition partners in Berlin. Weaknesses in the German economy (in no small part Merkel’s legacy) have turned attention inwards to domestic problems. Generational shifts and the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) have led to a more narrow conception of the country’s national interest; it is less willing to bear the “burden of the hegemon” in Europe and more open to acts of unilateralism.

Among other things, Scholz’s coalition has dismissed Mario Draghi’s proposals on EU competitiveness out-of-hand; frustrated an Italian-German banking takeover on protectionist grounds; broken with the EU majority in opposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles; and imposed controls on the country’s intra-Schengen borders. In November, after its collapse, the chancellor himself undertook a phone call with Vladimir Putin without coordinating with Brussels, Paris or Warsaw. Relations with France and Poland have deteriorated markedly.

Elsewhere in Europe, too, the widespread perception[1] is that Germany has gone missing from its old leadership role—the premise of ECFR’s ongoing podcast series, Searching for Deutschland.

An opportunity squandered

The election initially looked like a chance to set the country on a better course. Donald Trump’s presidential win and his looming tariffs, fundamental challenges to the German business model and the prevailing mood of insecurity might have focused minds. They might have inspired frank exchanges about the country’s vast investment needs, the state of its armed forces, necessary steps towards a more sovereign EU, relations with China, and the future sources of German prosperity in an age of geopolitical and climate crisis. The campaign might have laid the groundwork for a more stable and united government coalition capable of rupturing old taboos on those topics.

The campaign has often been rooted more in the realities of the mid-2010s than those of 2025: Ukraine and Trump are present, but somewhere on the horizon as two discussion points among many, rather than all-encompassing imperatives

Alas, such is not the election build-up Germany has experienced. It has felt out of its time, often rooted more in the realities of the mid-2010s than those of 2025: Ukraine and Trump have been present, but somewhere on the horizon as two discussion points among many, rather than all-encompassing imperatives. Debates and party programmes treat German defence improvements as an incremental, long-term process and generally leave the future of its financing hazy. Gloom about the economy is tempered only by relatively small-bore exchanges about tax and welfare policies. China, the climate, technological change, or fiscal-reform proposals on the scale needed are consigned to the sidelines. It all adds up to a campaign marked more by angst than urgency; more by handwringing and sloganeering than ambition or specificity.

Merz the gambler

All the while the AfD has enjoyed the wind in its sails. The party deserves little credit for this momentum. It is extreme even by the standards of the European far-right and lacks the quasi-professionalisation of counterparts like Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. Alice Weidel, its chancellor candidate, has been a weak and uncharismatic presence. Yet polls suggest the AfD will roughly double its 2021 vote share to about 21%. And its rise appears to be cowing mainstream leaders into avoiding pre-election discussions about Ukraine and defence spending that might nudge that share yet higher—hardly ideal in a country where these are badly needed to give the next government a mandate to act.

The AfD’s strength is largely circumstantial. In part, it reflects the unpopularity of the traffic-light coalition parties. J.D. Vance and Elon Musk have decried its political isolation in what appear to be the first throes of a new radical-right Atlanticism. Merz probably helped to legitimise the AfD with his risky mid-campaign gamble on passing Bundestag votes with the party’s MPs in support of tougher (and in parts unilateralist and probably unworkable) migration and asylum policies. The AfD’s jubilant response when one non-binding motion succeeded certainly suggested so.

Traffic light redux?

This drama also illustrated a third alarming dimension to the election campaign: a deteriorating prospect of a solid new government emerging after the ballots have been counted. Merz’s migration gambit, pitting the “Europeanist” and “Germany first” pillars of his foreign-policy credo against one another, has not notably increased support for his CDU and its Christian Social Union (CSU) sister. But it has sown division in their ranks and greatly toxified relations with the SPD and Greens, at least one of which he will need to form a majority coalition.

Depending on how many smaller parties clear the 5% threshold needed for Bundestag representation—which could be anywhere between none and three—the CDU/CSU may even lack the numbers for a coalition with merely one partner. That would present Merz with an unenviable choice between forming another ungainly tripartite coalition or attempting a minority government.

All this paints an ominous picture for Germany’s allies. At the time of writing, Macron is hosting the week’s second summit in Paris as Europe belatedly scrambles to develop its own plan for Ukraine. Meanwhile the Trump administration is advancing its negotiations with Russia seemingly above European heads, and on terms strikingly favourable to the Kremlin. If ever there were a moment demanding a stable Germany capable of convening and underwriting drastic European action, it is now. But the country’s election gives significant grounds to doubt that. The spectre of another fragile and disunited coalition, yet more inward-looking and go-it-alone than its predecessor, has grown as polling day has neared.

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It is, however, still just about possible to glimpse a better outcome. Over the course of the campaign Merz has become more sober and realistic about the dangers of the second Trump term for Germany. He has pledged a European reset, starting with visits to Paris and Warsaw on his first day in office. The latest polling does not entirely doom the prospects of a functional coalition—as long as Merz can summon up the humility and versatility needed, and patch up divides within the political mainstream. Perhaps the reality check of the past ten days will be enough to propel even loss-averse, change-wary Germany back towards its erstwhile European vocation as the continent’s hub.

The country’s European partners can play their part by stressing to Merz, the CDU/CSU and their prospective coalition partners the urgency of a united new German government that can engage fast and fully in overdue common decisions on Ukraine and wider European security. They can help to socialise once more the idea that coordinated European solutions to shared problems are firmly in the German national interest.

They can encourage the new government in Berlin to use its honeymoon period—and the drama and alarm of the moment—to slice through red lines on EU topics like defence, borrowing and closer foreign-policy integration. Like the EU as a whole, the federal republic tends to be boldest in moments of crisis. Therein lies the best hope of it taking its place once again at the heart of Europe.

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[1] Author’s discussions in EU capitals over 2021-2024