Events in Germany in 2005 were dominated by the decision to call an early federal election in September, 12 months ahead of schedule. The election followed disastrous regional election results for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in May and the continued unpopularity of the Social Democrat–Green federal government. Germany’s weak economic performance, high unemployment rates, and unpopular welfare-state reforms were the key factors in public discontent. The election outcome—a hung Parliament—left Germany in limbo for several weeks while the shape of a new government coalition was hammered out.
In January the payment scheme for unemployment benefits was altered, which caused discontent among those on benefits and contributed to the unpopularity of the federal government. Germany also faced a number of commemorative events marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, including a trip by the federal president in January to the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Measures were put in place to prevent neo-Nazi groups from disrupting such events after deputies of the far-right National Democratic Party boycotted the Saxony state parliament in protest against commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz.
During the year Germany was involved in a number of high-profile trials relating to global terrorism. Metin Kaplan, a Muslim radical, was jailed for life in Turkey for conspiring to overthrow the Turkish secular system. Kaplan, known as the caliph of Cologne, was extradited to Turkey from Germany to face charges in 2004 after Turkey banned the death penalty. The case of the Moroccan Mounir al-Motassadeq was also finally resolved following a year-long retrial. Motassadeq, who was convicted in 2003 of having been an accessory to the September 11 attacks in the United States, had had his 15-year sentence overturned in 2004 because the German courts had been unable to directly question suspects held by the U.S. In the retrial, with fresh evidence from the U.S., Motassadek was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organization and given a seven-year sentence, though he was not convicted of charges relating directly to the September 11 attacks.
In February the SPD, with help from a local ethnic Danish party, narrowly managed to avoid defeat in the Schleswig-Holstein state elections and to stay in office. Real damage to the SPD was done, however, by the party’s disastrous defeat in the North Rhine–Westphalia state election on May 22. The rout was attributed largely to high unemployment, the sluggish economy, and the unpopularity of welfare-state and labour-market reforms.
The cumulative effect of the SPD’s poor regional election results in 2004 and 2005 left the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), holding a strong position in the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of Parliament. The ruling SPD–Green Party coalition was seriously short of room for legislative maneuvering. In effect, there came into being an informal “grand coalition” in which negotiations between the two large parties were needed in order to realize legislative progress.
The SPD defeat in North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany’s largest state economy but an area that suffered from industrial decline and high unemployment rates, was what finally provoked Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to seek early elections. In order for early elections to be called, the chancellor had to engineer—and lose—a vote of confidence in the Bundestag and thereby prove that his government lacked the support of a stable parliamentary majority and could not stand. Schröder’s tactic was highly unusual and controversial. It could have been blocked at either of two points: by the German president, who had the responsibility to dissolve the Bundestag, or by the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), which could declare the move unconstitutional. In fact, the issue was referred to the FCC by two backbench deputies in protest against Schröder’s move, but neither Pres. Horst Köhler nor the FCC would intervene, which probably reflected the perceived popular and parliamentary will. The confidence vote in the Bundestag took place on July 1; 296 deputies voted against the government and 151 in favour, with 148 abstentions. The stage was set for the critical federal election to take place on September 18.
The campaign revolved around the state of the economy, the need for labour-market and tax-system reform, and the personalities of the chancellor candidates, Schröder for the SPD and Angela Merkel for the CDU/CSU. In the opinion polls the CDU/CSU enjoyed substantial leads for most of the year. The biggest question for most people seemed to be whether Merkel (who would be the country’s first woman chancellor) would be able, as the CDU/CSU had usually done, to form a coalition with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
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The SPD election campaign managed to gather momentum, however, despite the unpopularity of the Socialists’ reform measures and the fact that it was being squeezed on the left by a new Linke (“Left”) party, which brought together the former communists of eastern Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and disaffected traditional social democrats from the west, led by former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine and the PDS’s Gregor Gysi. The SPD’s impetus was driven largely by the personality of Schröder, who enjoyed consistently high personal popularity ratings.
The Union parties’ cause was not helped by the image of Merkel herself, who repeatedly showed as less popular than Schröder in opinion polls and was apparently uneasy in the media spotlight. Nor was her candidacy advanced by two political colleagues whose presence seemed only to divide party and electors. The outspoken CSU leader Edmund Stoiber had been the Union’s unsuccessful candidate for chancellor in 2002; he stirred up problems for the Union by making critical statements about the eastern electorate. Paul Kirchhof, Merkel’s choice for finance minister, was an academic who mired the Union in controversy with his ideas for the introduction of a flat-rate income tax.
The two candidates went head to head in a television debate on September 4. Schröder, the more accomplished media performer, was generally adjudged to have been the winner, but Merkel put in a stronger performance than many expected. Two weeks before the election, a large number of voters were still undecided. Opinion polls in the week before the election were still indicating a comfortable victory for the Union parties, although the gap was narrowing.
Exit polls revealed the thinness of the CDU/CSU’s margin. There was a mere 1% difference between the CDU and the SPD, a scant majority for the Union parties. Both Merkel and a jubilant Schröder claimed a mandate to be chancellor.
The CDU/CSU received four seats more than the SPD (226 to 222). The FDP showed strongly (61 seats), but the Union and the FDP were unable to form a parliamentary coalition with a workable majority. The Linke received 54 seats and the Greens 51, so a number of coalition permutations were possible. The two main parties began the delicate task of looking for a workable alliance. Three possibilities dominated—a grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD, a “traffic light” coalition of SPD (red), Green, and FDP (yellow), and a “Jamaica” coalition of CDU/CSU (black), Green, and FDP (named for the colours of the Jamaican flag). During the course of the campaign, the SPD had ruled out an arrangement that included the Linke, even though together the SPD, the Greens, and the Linke could muster more than 50% of the vote.
During the three weeks that followed the election, it gradually became clear that the only way forward would be the formation of a grand coalition. Serious negotiations were delayed by the continued insistence of both Merkel and Schröder that they be chancellor in the new government. Schröder finally ceded to his rival, and on October 10 it was announced that Germany would indeed have its first female chancellor. Merkel would, however, lack the strong popular mandate that she had anticipated. The cabinet seats were effectively divided up between three parties (the CDU shared posts with the CSU). The SPD was given eight cabinet portfolios (foreign affairs, finance, justice, economic cooperation and development, labour, health, transport, and environment) and the CDU/CSU six (economy; interior; defense; family; consumer rights, nutrition, and agriculture; and education) as well as the posts of chancellor and state secretary in the Chancellery. Negotiations over the detailed government program continued through the end of the year and focused in particular on labour-market reform, improvement of economic performance, and cuts in government expenditure.