After 18 years as the head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party, Angela Merkel resigned from the job as party leader on Dec. 7 at the party congress in Hamburg.
Following it, 999 CDU delegates from around the country elected Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as her successor from among three candidates.
Kramp-Karrenbauer did not achieve an absolute majority in the first round; only in the run-off was the vote narrowly decided in her favour, 517 votes putting her ahead of her strongest competitor, Friedrich Merz. Merkel was the first to offer her congratulations, embracing her warmly.
The 56-year-old Kramp-Karrenbauer, whose name is frequently abbreviated to AKK in Germany, was the prime minister of Saarland, a small German state bordering France. She is seen as Merkel’s favorite – both have a calm and pragmatic style of politics, and it was Merkel who called Kramp-Karrenbauer to Berlin to be the CDU’s general secretary.
Kramp-Karrenbauer has a high chance of becoming the next chancellor of Germany after Merkel steps down from the job in 2021.
Barring any political earthquakes over the next few years, the next German chancellor will likely come from the CDU. The reason is that the conservatives are the only remaining so-called Volkspartei, or people’s party in Germany – catchall parties that appeal to a wide range of voters to the left and right of center. With roughly 430,000 members and 26.7 percent of the vote in the last federal election in 2017, it is also most likely the strongest remaining traditional Volkspartei in a European Union that has seen other Christian Democrat parties fall under 10 percent and Social Democrats fall into deep crises.
In the CDU, the party leader traditionally takes the chancellorship, so whoever wishes to be chancellor must also lead the party. Merkel did otherwise now because she intends to step down as chancellor in 2021. It is therefore possible that Kramp-Karrenbauer could become the next German chancellor. What does this mean for Ukraine?
As reported by the Kyiv Post early November, Kramp-Karrenbauer has taken a softer tone than the other contenders when it comes to the war in east Ukraine, waged by Russia and its proxies since 2014, and Russian policy in general. This impression has been reinforced by her response after the Russian attack at the Kerch Strait.
All three candidates for replacing Merkel in CDU have been critical of Nord Stream 2, a controversial gas pipeline project that will connect Russia and Germany and bypass the traditional transit countries, including Ukraine.
Yet the losing candidates Spahn and Merz were clearer in their objections than Kramp-Karrenbauer, saying that delaying or abandoning the project is not off the cards. Kramp-Karrenbauer on the other hand does not wish for construction to be halted, but offered to reduce the amount of gas to be transferred to Germany through it.
“I do still want the project to be further discussed in Europe. That is an urgent necessity,” she said when questioned on her soft stance during a talk show taking place after the Russian attack on Ukrainian ships in Kerch Strait on Nov. 25.
She also says that it must be examined, where and how the current plans can be changed to limit the gas flow or otherwise adjust the project. She also suggested barring Russian ships from the Azov Sea from entering European harbors.
Leading foreign policy experts have long been skeptical of Nord Stream 2. The question now is whether the project can still be stopped at all. It is under construction and is set to be finished before the end of 2019.
The German daily paper Taz wrote in mid-November that the Naturschutzbund, a large German nature conservation group, failed to halt construction in several lawsuits against the pipeline. A big lawsuit is still going on. But in the Naturschutzbund, they only hope for improved compensation for the sea, such as the restoration of underwater plants. It’s no longer about stopping the construction.
The organization also claims that it did not receive documents on the environmental damage caused by the already built Nord Stream 1 that would help estimate the damage expected from Nord Stream 2. Nord Stream 2 claims the opposite. Divers working in the Baltic Sea tell of Filipinos and Indonesians laboring on the pipe-laying ships for a pittance.
This could be one of the reasons why the Taz reporter and other journalists who have even traveled from Japan and Finland to join a special boat trip organized by the Nord Stream consortium in September were not allowed to get to the Castoro 10 pipe-laying ships. The group of journalists went by boat until they saw the Castoro, but then had to go back. The official reason was that the company was under pressure and could not risk delays; the progress of the project could not be endangered. Despite all concerns, construction on the project is continuing and is on schedule, according to Russia.
There are many indications that the louder voices from inside the CDU are promising more room for maneuver than Kramp-Karrenbauer would really have as chancellor. The project has progressed too far for that. In the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel, Stefan Meister, an expert on Russia from the think-tank German Council on Foreign Relations, and Kirsten Westphal, an expert in the field of the European energy sector working for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs speak of “symbolic politics” and a “sham debate.”
Should the state really rescind permits, the company would “sue, and win”, says Meister. Westphal expresses similar views: even the European Commission could no longer prevent the project’s completion.
Westphal, however, believes that “new regulatory hurdles from the EU” could make it more difficult to fully utilize the pipeline and reduce Gazprom’s export capacity. But for this to occur, the government in Berlin would have to coordinate with EU-institutions in Brussels.
This idea sounds very similar to that expressed by the new CDU leader Kramp-Karrenbauer. Part of it is the question of whether Germany can put pressure on Russia by cutting imports from Gazprom should the government in Moscow misbehave. These pipelines work both ways, after all.
The Social Democrats, coalition partners of the CDU, would likely not play along with such a policy. Their current leaders still defend the project. And many former greats of the party are closely linked with Russia. The former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, for example, makes his living at Russian state-owned companies. The former foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel is connected by a company to the self-identified pro-Russia lobbyist Heino Wiese, who in turn is also a longtime SPD politician and helped manage the campaigns of both Schröder and Gabriel.
But the Social Democrats are decaying, with some election results falling below 20 percent – they are decidedly no longer a Volkspartei like the CDU. In their place, the Greens, a party stemming from civil rights and environmentalist movements, are gaining ground. European Parliament members Rebecca Harms and Marieluise Beck, well known as pro-Ukrainian, are members of this party. Its leaders are strongly against the pipeline.
After the Russian attack on the three Ukrainian ships, the Greens’ party lead, Annalena Baerbock called to stop Nord Stream 2.
“The federal government has to turn its back on Nord Stream 2,” she said. “This should be clear to everyone since Russia’s actions in the Asov Sea.”
She is one half of the party leadership, the other being Robert Habeck. He has been calling for an end to the pipeline since 2016. He said that, “(Russian President) Vladimir Putin is bombing civilians in Syria and displacing yet more people, driving them into misery and death. We are helping him with our imports of gas and oil from Russia.”
Many Green politicians are also against the pipeline for environmental reasons.
As things currently stand, coalition of the conservative CDU and the Greens would, then, be a government that would make it hard for Russia to use the pipeline as an instrument of blackmailing Ukraine or Germany.
Such a coalition is not unlikely, as the Greens and the CDU have grown closer together in recent times. And despite differences in political views with the Greens, for example about equal rights for LGBT people, a chancellor Kramp-Karrenbauer, who believes in compromises, would be able to work with the party.
But unless there are early elections, such a new coalition would only become possible after Merkel leaves politics in 2021, as Merkel too is committed to the Nord Stream 2 project’s completion. But barring delays the project would already be completed by then.
