In 2010, as David Cameron formed a government in the United Kingdom, Angela Merkel reportedly advised him, “You’ll be fine, but your coalition partner will be destroyed.” Merkel was projecting her own experience: Over the previous five years, she had established the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as the undisputed center of German politics. Merkel’s moment in the sun, so her comment to Cameron implied, had cast a deep shadow over her coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
A decade later, the collapse of the proud, 150-year old SPD is the political event gripping Berlin. From its glory days as the CDU’s principal challenger for the chancellery, the SPD has sunk all the way to 15.8 percent in last month’s European parliamentary elections, the worst result in its history. The desperation is palpable. As polls show the party sliding even further, not a day goes by without panicked SPD officials musing over the party’s fate—and the possibility of its total implosion. Since the European Union (EU) election disaster pushed party leader Andrea Nahles out the door, SPD grandees are even discussing selecting Kevin Kühnert, the head of the SPD’s youth-group, to take her place. At 29 years old, Kühnert may make Pete Buttigieg seem like an experienced graybeard, but he possesses a certain attraction: More than any other SPD leader, he argued passionately against the coalition with Merkel’s CDU.
The story of the SPD’s collapse appears straightforward, then—the inevitable decline of a party relegated to junior status in government. But perhaps the explanation isn’t so simple. A less dramatic but equally noteworthy downward trend is now discernible in Merkel’s CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) of Bavaria. Just like the SPD, the so-called Union of CDU/CSU suffered its worst European parliamentary election result in history last month, winning just under 29 percent of the vote. Attending the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) meeting in San Sebastián, Spain last month, it seemed clear to me that the crisis these parties face is not one of political profile but of bland centrism.
Of course, the Union and EPP remain the largest bloc in Germany and Europe, respectively, despite having lost significant support. As one seasoned EPP observer put it to me, “We lost but we still won.” Increasingly, however, Merkel’s advice to David Cameron seems ill-suited to the moment. In Germany and across Europe, centrist parties channeling EU incrementalism are buffeted by right-wing nationalists and left-wing eco-populists. It is they who are offering crisp answers to new challenges—and gaining in the polls. The disintegration of the Republicans in France, the weakening of the Tories in the United Kingdom, and the decline of Forza Italia in Italy all raise the specter of the CDU/CSU in Germany following the center-Left into the electoral doldrums.
In fact, for the first time in history, consecutive polls show the Greens ahead of both the Union and the SPD. This should shock no one. In the past year, West European elites have listened with rapt attention as a 16-year-old school girl from Sweden has lectured them on the dangers of climate change. In Germany, the 26-year old Vlogger, Rezo, in a highly polemical video titled “The Destruction of the CDU,” took aim at the party for its wobbly enforcement of climate policies. The video’s reach cannot be overstated: In a country of 80 million, it has been viewed more than 15 million times and discussed ad nauseam in the media. Today, no issue commands the same visceral, almost mystical status amongst Western Europe’s youth, activists, and intellectuals as climate change.
Merkel has grown all-too aware of this energy—and appears to have made her strategic choice. In a private session with the Union’s members of Bundestag earlier this month, she announced an end to “wishy-washy” climate policies and promised “disruptive change,” beginning this fall. Her preferred successor and CDU leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (affectionately known as AKK) followed suit with an op-ed arguing for more climate urgency.
The press may applaud such moves. After all, it is an open secret that a disproportionate percentage of the Berlin media harbors sympathy for the younger, more cosmopolitan Greens. In the last edition of Der Spiegel, Germany’s high-brow liberal magazine, its token conservative writer bid farewell to his readers with an aside that the majority of his editors, if forced to confess, would likely prefer a Green-led government.
But for the CDU/CSU, long the party of German business and conservative values, leap-frogging the Greens to climate purity and political correctness is not an obviously easy thing to do. Germany’s energiewende—its planned transition away from fossil fuels—has already proven costly, with Germany’s non-household electricity prices being now the highest in Europe. Unless it is prepared to alienate its base altogether, the CDU/CSU can do little more than co-opt a select few Green themes and hope that this satisfies the general public. Of late, for example, the talk is of a new climate ministry. But if this is the extent of the “disruptive change” Merkel has in mind, it’s unlikely to win the votes of those who take the Greens’ platform seriously.
There is, of course, another option: The Union could attempt to retrench itself among its more conservative base. In December, Merkel’s anointed successor AKK defeated the conservative darling Friedrich Merz to succeed Merkel as chair of the CDU. Ever since, she has struggled to find her footing. With the European elections past, a growing chorus of observers are wondering aloud whether she has what it takes to succeed her mentor when the time comes. If the regional elections this fall in the former East Germany unfold as badly for the CDU as opinion polls suggest, it will be difficult for her to lead the Union into a general election. As one prominent member of the EPP predicted to me in Spain, “Either Merkel stays or Merz is coming.”
If the CDU does rediscover its conservative tradition under Merz, it is more likely to peel off voters from the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has pooled large numbers of law-and-order voters, cultural conservatives, and critics of globalization over the past few years. This would make for a more natural path for the Union, which has long stood as the serious conservative party in German politics. Moreover, a renewed focus on innovation as the German economy slows might prove more successful in combating climate change than a watered-down version of Green party regulations.
Just as important, there is a template for how to execute such a shift. In neighboring Austria, the center-Right People’s Party has blazed an electoral trail by co-opting select themes from the right-wing Freedom Party while remaining connected to its conservative identity. In the process, it has shot into pole position while the country’s Social Democrats have languished.
If today’s politicians are expected to move heaven and earth to combat climate change, then it is just as legitimate for them to reconsider Europe’s other sacred cows. And that brings us back to the SPD. In neighboring Denmark, the Social Democrats (SD) won a major victory in early June after tacking right on immigration. In the process, the right-wing Danish People’s Party was slashed in half. If the CDU is to reverse its slide, it will have to move outside of the comfortable consensus of the past several years. The key to Europe isn’t simply a matter of optics, as Merkel suggested some years back, but of channeling the currents of our time. Whoever ignores them risks being washed away.
Just ask David Cameron.