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Beleaguered Scholz Makes Election Pitch to Skeptical Germans

(Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s election campaign kicks into high gear on Wednesday, when Chancellor Olaf Scholz makes his case in a public address for another term, despite polls showing voters are overwhelmingly looking for a change.

Scholz’s Social Democrats will tout the chancellor’s experience while criticizing the opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who heads the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and is leading opinion polls by a wide margin. They’ll say he’s incapable of leading Europe’s largest economy through a world of growing threats and uncertainties.

The candidates will have to convince voters ahead of the Feb. 23 election that they’re best placed to pull Germany out of its economic malaise and safeguard its important manufacturing sector. The next chancellor will also have to navigate a new relationship with incoming US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to upend the global order, potentially at the expense of European companies.

“I’ll guarantee a new leadership in Europe for Europe,” Merz said on Tuesday. “Germany is a sleeping middle power and must become an active middle power.”

Scholz will address the lower house of parliament on Wednesday, his first major public address since a date was set for the election. He’s expected to lay out the stakes of the vote and underscore that this will decide the country’s political path. 

Scholz threw the German government into crisis last week by firing his Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party in a dispute over more debt-financed support for Ukraine. That marked the end of the fractious coalition between Scholz’s SPD, the liberal FDP and the Green party.

Stock investors initially welcomed the call for the snap election, with Germany’s benchmark DAX Index surging 1.7% following the announcement. The move higher has since been erased, as the threat of US tariffs under Trump, as well as doubt over economic growth in China, has hit European equities.

The next chancellor will also confront a bleak economy, which has failed to mount a sustained rebound from the pandemic and war in Ukraine, with some economists predicting 2024 output to shrink for a second year in a row. The main weakness is its manufacturing sector, which is dragged down by soft foreign demand, high energy costs and structural issues at home.

Investor sentiment in Germany unexpectedly worsened in November, with an expectations index by the ZEW institute falling to 7.4 from 13.1 the previous month. Economists had expected an increase to 13.2.

German bonds have gained over the past week, as the market prices in slower growth — particularly if there are tit-for-tat tariffs between the EU and US — and a faster pace of interest-rate cuts from the European Central Bank.

What Bloomberg Economics Says...

“While the short-term impact of a power vacuum should not be overstated, the absence of a mandate to govern will also constrain Germany’s ability to respond to unfolding events, like the restoration of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House.”

—Martin Ademmer, Antonio Barroso and Jamie Rush, economists. For full note, click here

The other big question for investors is whether a new government in Berlin does away with the nation’s rigid debt brake, paving the way for extra issuance and fiscal stimulus. The prospect of added bond sales last week drove a widely watched gauge of supply to record levels.

Scholz will lead a minority government with the Greens until the February election. In the interim, lawmakers from the SPD and Greens are pushing for limited cooperation with opposition lawmakers to pass legislation, including some military procurement projects, which would guarantee planning security for defense contractors, according to people familiar with the planning.

Scholz’s minority government will first need to pass a supplementary budget for this year and the 2025 finance plan approved in parliament. To do so, they’ll need the votes of opposition lawmakers.

Finance Minister Joerg Kukies conceded on Tuesday that it’s “not realistic” that the 2025 budget will get approval by the end of the year, meaning the government will be forced to resort to a temporary finance planning process to keep funds flowing.

While it’s not an ideal state of affairs and some new projects may face delays, Kukies said it’s not technically problematic and has happened multiple times before, including earlier this year after a constitutional court ruling upended the government’s finances.

Scholz’s support plunged to record lows this fall amid political fragmentation in Germany, which has seen the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the new far-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht. Both of those parties have taken advantage of rising resentment over the government’s management of irregular migration.

Merz’s alliance is leading with more than 30%, putting it in prime position to win back the chancellery after it lost to Scholz’s SPD party three years ago.

Backing for the SPD is at about 16% in third place, behind the AfD in second with around 18%. The Greens are at about 11% in fourth, while the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht is fifth with roughly 8%.

The FDP is polling as low as 3%, down from 11.5% in the 2021 election, putting it in danger of missing the 5% threshold for getting into parliament.

Coalition negotiations in Germany usually take several months which means that the next government may not be in place before April at the earliest.

As things stand, a CDU/CSU-led “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats looks the likeliest outcome, with possibly the Greens as a junior partner.

--With assistance from Michael Msika and Constantine Courcoulas.

(updates with additional speech details from the fifth paragraph.)

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