Deutschland ...

The old order is under pressure in Germany. Also: a hostage update.

The results in German election pretty much aligned with most of the polls leading up to it. A significant loss for the traditional centre-left parties (SPD, Greens, FPD), a clear win for the centre-right CDU/CSU and a surge for the new right where the Musk endorsed and somewhat controversial AfD did well, in particular among young voters. The AfD doubled in size, no doubt in response to the country’s immigration woes.

What is noteworthy is that while the traditional left lost, the more radical smaller leftwing parties did well (two parties: Left Party and BSW) and it all indicated that in Germany too the post-war consensus of the centre (little bit to the right, little bit to the left) is under serious pressure. It may have held for now, but the next election could see far more dramatic results if issues like Germany’s faltering economy, lack of innovation and divisions over immigration policies are not adequately resolved by the new chancellor, the CDU/CSU leader Friedrich Merz.

Merz will not have an easy job. For those in the Anglo-Saxon world: this is proportional representation at work and parties need to clear a 5% popular hurdle to be represented in parliament. As a result there is no clear majority and you will need at least two parties to build a governing coalition. The Liberal FDP, the party that forever managed to be the balance of power in Germany failed in hitting that threshold and it may now be harder to form a new government that commands a clear majority.

There are two winners, but Merz as leader of the centre-right CDU/CSU has ruled out forming a coalition with the other one, the far right AfD under its leader Alice Weidel which came in second place. Her party would have been a conservative ideological fit for Merz, and while in some countries such alignments are less of an issue, in Germany with its dark past it is much harder to team up with a party associated with Nazi sympathies.

But Weidel is now heading the opposition to a bunch of establishment men who represent the old consensus and she will be a force to be reckoned with. Weidel who is gay, once worked for Goldman Sachs, is fluent in mandarin and has a partner from Sri Lanka is young and cosmopolitan and hardly fits the Nazi image. If she can keep the fringe elements in her party under control and continue to connect with young voters many in Europe believe she could be the winner four years from now.

Merz was very lucky that the socially conservative but far-left party BSW under Sahra Wagenknecht just missed the electoral threshold so now he only needs one other party to form a majority coalition and it is likely it will be the loser of the election, Scholz’s SPD. Such a combination is subject to bridging some serious ideological divides, yes, but it also means a return to the sort of grand coalitions that Angela Merkel used to run. It will probably work for now, but is not really reflective of the call for change in the country. Let’s put it this way: there will not be a lot of new ideas and unconventional thinking to fix Germany’s problems coming out of Berlin anytime soon.

There is however one new and emerging initiative: Merz has announced he will steer the ship into a direction that is less dependent on America and will focus on Europe taking the lead in its defence. Germany will need to play that role in a continent under pressure, and in that he will probably find like-minded souls in the SPD as coalition partner. That said, the discontent across Germany and the significant percentage of young voters that support the hard right (AfD) and the hard left (Left Party and BSW) tells us that this grand effort in the centre could be one of the last ones that Germany will see for some time.

Hostages

Six more hostages were released on Saturday: Omer Wenkert, Tal Shoham, Avera Mengistu, Hisham Al-Sayyed, Eliyah Cohen and Omer Shem Tov. Again it was a brutal spectacle. Two unreleased hostages (Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal) were forced by Hamas to watch and two of the released ones who were actually held for 10 years, Mengistu and Al-Sayyed, were reported to be in a very bad state, cognitively, mentally and physically. As a result, Nethanyahu ordered that Israel’s part of the deal, the release of 602 Arab prisoners, be on hold until later. And that once more is jeopardizing the deal.

We will see what will happen now, later this week four more deceased Israeli hostages will be released and that will conclude phase one of the hostage deal. Negotiations for the second phase which should lead to the release of all the remaining hostages are supposed to be underway, but it is unclear where things will go given the tensions and the questions around the continued role of Hamas in the Gaza strip. More on Wednesday, which will also be the day that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas will be laid to rest.

I will leave you with Omer Wenkert reuniting with his parents last Saturday:

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