Olaf Schultz will become German Chancellor today (Wednesday), and the center-left coalition led by him will open a new page after 16 years of Angela Merkel’s rule.
Schultz will be officially elected by the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, and then sworn in by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He promised to continue the line of the popular Merkel, but also to work to make Germany more “green and fair”.
The finance minister under Merkel led the Social Democrats to victory in the September 26 election – a result that was considered impossible at the beginning of the year given the divisions prevalent in the party and the anemic support it gained at the beginning of the campaign.
Schultz, 63, who has eroded Merkel in style and action as part of a winning strategy, has now formed Germany’s first national “traffic light” coalition (named after the party colors) with the Green Ecological Party and the Liberal Democrats.
“We have a chance for a fresh start for Germany,” Schultz told his party over the weekend, after giving its blessing to the coalition agreement with 99 percent support.
The alliance aims to reduce carbon emissions, renew shaky digital infrastructure, renew citizenship laws, raise the minimum wage and add Germany to the handful of countries in the world that have made marijuana consumption legal.
At the same time, incoming Foreign Minister Annalena Barbuk has pledged a rigid line vis-à-vis authoritarian countries like Russia and China, a change of direction from Merkel’s business pragmatism.
Barbock, one of the leaders of the Green Party, is one of eight women in Germany’s first gender-balanced cabinet. “It’s compatible with the society we live in – half the power belongs to women,” Schultz said this week, defining himself as a “feminist.”
Schultz and his team promise stability as France prepares for tough presidential elections next year and Europe faces the ongoing aftermath of the Brexit. Corona’s cruel fourth wave, however, has already put the incoming coalition to the test.
“We must open a new page in dealing with the corona plague – these are the circumstances that the new government is facing,” Schultz told reporters yesterday, alongside his finance and economy ministers, Christian Lindner and Robert Habakkuk.
Germany has counted more than 103,000 dead from Corona since the beginning of the plague. Since the weather began to cool, there has been a resurgence in infection, and patients have filled the intensive care units to zero.
Schultz pushed for Germany to follow Austria in making immunization a corona mandatory to take control of the plague, while experts warn of serious health system crises. He aims to put the matter to a vote in parliament before the end of the year with the aim of implementing the law as early as February or March.
Merkel, Germany’s first chancellor, is retiring from politics after four consecutive terms, the first German leader since the war to resign from the leadership voluntarily. She leaves behind big shoes, with a large majority of Germans supporting her leadership, even if her party, the Christian Democrats, sometimes rebelled in her moderate way.
“For 16 years, Angela Merkel has defined the political center,” columnist Nicholas Bluma said. “If she had run again, she would have won a fifth term,” he added, saying it was time for new blood.