The elusiveness of German power
This newsletter is a five-minute read
Dear Reader,
Today we are trying see the world through Jens Spahn’s eyes.
Regards,
Jörg & Axel
‘A matter of life and death’
Regular readers of this newsletter will know that Health Minister Jens Spahn has been getting a kicking of late.
Firstly, he’s developed a habit of cashing proverbial cheques his ministry can’t carry. He pledged a comprehensive, nationwide testing regime by the start of March. But at the month’s end companies, schools and nurseries still don’t have the necessary equipment to fulfil the requirements placed upon them by the government.
Secondly, he’s been accused of cronyism over the fact that he tapped up his private and political contacts to purchase medical masks at the start of the pandemic, sometimes for hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ euros.
But the embattled Health Minister came out fighting in an interview with der Spiegel at the weekend.
The mask purchases in April were “a matter of life and death,” he insisted.
“Hospital bosses told us that if they didn't get masks within a week, they'd have to shut down. The whole world suddenly needed masks. China had cut production. Even masks that were already ordered on paper didn’t arrive.”
Comparing the situation to the wild west, Mr Spahn recalled that “most of the time I was on the phone with complete strangers. It felt like a new offer came in every two minutes… …But yes, I realised then that it works much better when the offer comes from someone you know and can assess.”
Among the offers that he could trust was one from the company his husband works for (his husband “only found out about the deal a few weeks ago” when contacted by Spiegel); another was a deal for €1.5 billion with a family-run logistics company who are involved in the CDU in Mr Spahn’s electoral constituency.
To give the 40-year-old minister his due, his critics are contradicting themselves.
He is taking flak for paying over the odds for face masks and for over-riding bureaucratic procedures in April, but he is also being accused of being too stingy on vaccine purchases, and for being too rule-obsessed on the vaccine rollout.
Which is he, a spendthrift dilettante or a knauserige pedant? His opponents can’t beat him with both sticks.
Still though, Mr Spahn’s claim that he first discovered the advantage of personal contacts during the pandemic is stretching the truth a bit far.
After winning election to the Bundestag at the age of 22, his political star has risen fast… and so too has his personal wealth. Some say that his property investments have been built a little too close to his political interests over the years.
Business and politics are tightly entwined in the CDU, especially at the local level. The heavy involvement of local businessmen in party matters is part of the reason for the CDU’s electoral success over the decades. Business and politics isn’t always a good mix though - as shown by the huge commissions that a few CDU/CSU politicians have taken for arranging medical mask deals.
At the same time, there is no suggestion Mr Spahn has attempted to enrich himself via mask deals.
Mr Spahn will undoubtedly have questions to answer when this is all over. He will limp out of the pandemic a wounded man, so wounded perhaps that he might never attain his ultimate goal of becoming Chancellor.
But the defence he makes of his actions is one that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. He had to make a lot of decisions very quickly. And those decisions were of enormous consequence. Perhaps a man with his skill in networking was what the country needed in a moment of deep crisis.
J.L.
The elusiveness of German power
One of the most interesting things to observe during the past few months has been the slippery nature of power in the German political system.
Built as the antithesis to the Nazi regime, the current system is designed to have a weak centre. Contrary to common perception, the Prussian and Nazi eras were the exception to hundreds of years of highly decentralized power in the German speaking world. The Holy Roman Empire was a loose coalition of warring princedoms, each with their own currencies, religions and rules.
Modern Germany is built on that tradition. Districts have considerable flexibility in setting their own taxes, while the states have control over health and education policies.
Paradoxically, this weak structure has a habit of creating Chancellors whose reigns can be measured in decades rather than years. Konrad Adenauer lasted 14 years, Helmut Kohl 16 years.
Angela Merkel will also manage 1.6 decades.
At times during her career she has appeared allmächtig. She drove through the Greek bailouts (2012-2015) against opposition from within her own party. When she turned her back on nuclear power in 2011, she presented her decision as a fait accompli to surprised state leaders. And during the refugee crisis she stopped applying the Dublin regulation without asking the Bundestag.
Unless I am mistaken, she hasn’t suffered a single parliamentary defeat in fifteen years. (In 2012, when 13 backbenchers rebelled against the Greek bailout, the opposition rather presumptuously called it “the dusk of her Chancellorship.”)
But the pandemic has revealed just how intangible the power of the Bundeskanzlerin can be. Unlike in other democracies, you can’t calculate a German leader’s strength by counting votes in parliament. The Chancellor’s influence is built on a more complex web of relations with the states, with the parliament, and with her own party.
The past half year has been marked by a game of cat and mouse between Ms Merkel and the state leaders. At times Merkel has had the mouse between her paws, at other times the mouse is pulling on her tail.
Quite when or why the one has the advantage over the other isn’t always clear.
Recently though the states have had the upper hand. They nod along at lockdown summits and put their names to agreements, only to largely ignore them when they apply pandemic rules in their own fiefdoms.
The dispute that has laid Merkel’s loss of power bare concerns the so-called Notbremse (emergency brake). The Notbremse is a simple mechanism: above a 7-day incidence of 100 coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the February lockdown rules return. Personal contacts are reduced to one other person outside one’s household, sport stops, and shops other than supermarkets close.
But some state leaders have merrily set the barrier for the Notbremse at an incidence of 150, others have only introduced it locally, while Berlin has refused to apply it at all.
Asked in the Bundestag why the system has descended into chaos, Ms Merkel started a tiresome technical lecture on the byzantine relationship of federal and state power.
On Sunday, she went on the country’s main political talk show, Anne Will, to make one last attempt to win back control. She warned the state leaders that she would take matters into her own hands if they don’t start behaving themselves. At the same time, she admitted that she wasn’t sure what mechanism she could use to make them obey her.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, she doesn’t have such a mechanism - going on TV to wag her finger is all she’s got. Perhaps the resourceful Ms Merkel still has one last trick up her sleeve. But the intangible aura that comes with her office seems to be slipping away forever.
J.L.
Who we are:
Jörg Luyken: Journalist based in Berlin since 2014. His work has been published by German and English outlets including der Spiegel, die Welt, the Daily Telegraph. Formerly in the Middle East. Classicist; Masters in International Politics & Arabic from St Andrews.
Axel Bard Bringéus: Started his career as a journalist for the leading Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and has spent the last decade in senior roles at Spotify and as a venture capital investor. In Berlin since 2011.
Very insightful analysis!