Today at shortly after three, Olaf Scholz makes a government statement. The Chancellor wants to make it clear what attitude the Federal Government will take in the forthcoming international summit marathon. It won’t be easy. Scholz has – with his authority to issue guidelines – many open questions to answer. Here are the most important.
According to SPD leader Lars Klingbeil, Germany must “have the right to be a leading power”. So far, the social-democratic chancellor has raised this claim – and at the same time not. Nothing exemplifies that quite like his ongoing Ukraine mantra. It reads: Germany is leading the way in arms deliveries to the country attacked by Vladimir Putin’s soldiers. On the one hand. And on the other hand: Nothing happens that the Western Allies have not decided together. Want to say: leadership or convoy – what does Scholz really want?
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Olaf Scholz, Jens Plötner’s most important adviser, has just made it clear that being a war victim cannot result in a bonus from EU membership. The foreign minister from the Greens, however, struck a very different note. Ukraine’s accession to the West Club should not be judged “according to the formula”. So what applies to Ukraine: victim bonus or European compliance?
It is indisputable that at the moment neither Ukraine is capable of joining (corruption, lack of the rule of law) nor is Europe capable of absorbing it. It is only logical that Olaf Scholz calls for a “modernization of structures and decision-making processes”. This means, for example, replacing the unanimity principle in foreign and security policy issues with the majority principle. One state alone should no longer be able to block all others. The problem: how far does it go? How should the new Europe be composed? And who should decide about that?
Two examples: Wolfgang Schmidt, Olaf Scholz’s Minister for the Chancellery, demands: “We have to do something about voting rights and the composition of the European Parliament.” The background: Measured against its population, Germany has far fewer MEPs in the European Parliament than it should have . The vote imbalance is about 1:10 compared to little Malta, for example. It’s been like this for decades, but it’s still unfair.
And then: Should such complicated and contentious questions be clarified in a European convention? That is what the European Parliament wants; also because it promises more power in relation to the European Commission and the individual member states. The inclination to follow that is correspondingly low there. However, such a convention is in the coalition agreement of the German traffic light government. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has just cleared that up: the convention is just one of the possible reform ideas…
The chancellor, his chancellery minister and his most important foreign policy adviser can be understood as follows: without a reform of the European Union, no new countries will join – not even Ukraine. One wishes for clarity from Scholz in the Bundestag debate today: is that so? And what does that mean for Ukraine? Can it also mean:
No matter how much Ukraine tries – after the end of the war – to be a decent democratic state – that does not mean that it can become a member of the EU, because Europe is not ready for it yet?
One suspects that this can happen, but that is precisely why one would have an answer from the mouth of the government official who was about to be declared in the Bundestag.
SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil admitted that “mistakes” were made here. In short, the mistakes looked like this: Eastern Europe, that meant years, for decades: Russia first, then nothing for a long time, then maybe Poland, and a long time later: Ukraine. The Ukraine war has turned everything around: Poland is the new leading power in Eastern Europe, Ukraine has become the most pressing European problem, Russia has literally shot itself out of the circle of creditworthy European powers for years, if not decades. What does Scholz say about this?
Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht refers to the upgrade of the Bundeswehr with 100 billion euros over the next few years, which Scholz announced as part of a “turning point”. All well and good, but: is Germany then safe from a nuclear power, Russia?
Social Democrat Lambrecht says that Europe must work to deter a “potential opponent” (who else could that be besides Russia?) – even without the United States.
What follows from this: the establishment of a European Defense Community? With nuclear weapons?
The question is pressing, Emanuel Macron has already asked it publicly. Among other things, therefore: what if in two years the US President is no longer called Joe Biden, but Donald Trump, who has already declared NATO “obsolete”?
Conclusion: We didn’t come up with these pressing questions. They raised Olaf Scholz’s own people. And that’s just as well. Germany needs this debate.
And would have liked to know today: where is the chancellor?
