In the hours before the parliamentary vote of no-confidence that brought down the now-minority government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday, a vicious debate over the policy failures of the past decade broke out among the leaders of Germany’s four main establishment parties.
Friedrich Merz, who leads the opposition center-right Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, understandably focused on the infighting that ultimately doomed the Ampelkoalition—or traffic-light coalition, after the three parties’ colors—over which Scholz presided until last month. For their part, Scholz, who leads the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, and Christian Lindner, who heads the market-friendly Free Democratic Party, or FDP, tried to avoid blame for the coalition government’s missteps. And Robert Habeck, who leads the Green Party, focused on the geopolitical blunders committed by previous CDU-dominated governments led by former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Yet while the established parties focused on the past, Germany’s—and Europe’s—future may well depend on how it responds to the challenges posed to its constitutional order by the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, and the populist far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW.