Public opinion and government partners “activate” Scholz

Urging Chancellor Olaf Scholz to come out of his lethargy became a clamor, also in Germany. Suddenly, both its coalition partners and public opinion share the view that Germany should supply Ukraine with heavy weapons. “We have a problem in the Foreign Ministry. Germany must start sending what Ukraine needs, ”demanded the green deputy Anton Hofreiter, president of the European Affairs committee of the federal Parliament. “Scholz must once again assume leadership tasks,” said liberal Marie Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the Defense committee.

Both representatives of the government partners of the Social Democrat Scholz, green and liberal, made these statements on their return from a working visit to kyiv. Traveling with them was Social Democrat Michael Roth, who is also in favor of increasing arms supplies, as Ukraine demands.

Hofreiter represents the most left wing of the Greens. Something that, moreover, separated him from the distribution of ministerial portfolios, in search of more conciliatory positions with social democrats and liberals. But his defense of heavy weapons supplies to kyiv is extensive both by the Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister, Robert Habeck, and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, the two mainstays of the Greens within Scholz’s coalition. Habeck had even been claiming it since before that government was formed, in December. In other words, well before the Russian invasion began and Germany reversed its until then stubborn refusal to import weapons into that region in crisis. It is not a minority opinion: 77% of German citizens share this position, as well as the need to toughen sanctions against Russia, according to the latest “Politbarometer” of ZDF public television.

Scholz seems to have listened to his partners or to public opinion. On Friday, government sources confirmed to the Reuters agency the chancellor’s intention to approve an allocation of 2,000 million euros for military aid to regions in crisis, half of which would go to Ukraine. It is another 180-degree turn in Germany’s decades-long cautious arms policy. It follows Scholz’s own announcement, a few days after the start of the invasion, of allocating 100,000 million euros to the modernization of its armed forces, after acknowledging the lamentable state in which decades of austerity have left them, also in Defense. The announcements are there, but so far they have not translated into facts, recalled these days in a column of the weekly “Der Spiegel”, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

Habeck and Baerbock, leaders of eco-pacifism, have become the best allies since Berlin for kyiv. And the German citizen, for the moment, has rewarded them with popularity ratings that exceed those of the “lethargic” Scholz. Both are now the best valued politicians in the country, while both the chancellor and the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, are in the doldrums.

Another survey, this time from “Der Spiegel”, reveals that 69% of citizens consider the ravages caused by the war in relations between Berlin and Moscow to be “irreparable”. As long as Vladimir Putin remains in power, no solutions are in sight, according to that survey. All of this, in a context in which the «mea culpa» of the big parties is multiplying with respect to what has been the common line of both the Social Democrats -under the government of Gerhard Schröder, from 1998 to 2005- and the Conservatives -in the following 16 years under Angela Merkel – to “please” Putin. Steinmeier, originally a social democrat although when he became president of the country he formally left his militancy, recently recognized his “mistakes”, in his stages as minister of the Schröder Chancellery and then of Foreign Affairs, in two terms of Merkel. These two former foreign ministers were responsible for the birth and later extension of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Schröder still clings to his positions in that mega-company, key to the German energy unit in Moscow. Merkel is silent.

The media pressure on both former foreign ministers is enormous. Columns and comments are published on a daily basis blaming them for the current situation, which prevents Germany from supporting the immediate embargo on Russian coal, oil and gas demanded by other EU partners or the United States. Visionary Habeck seeks emergency remedies and alternatives to Russian energy. There he also has the support of public opinion: 59% believe that Germany should break with that dependency as soon as possible, according to another “Spiegel” poll.

Waiting for this to be feasible, in a country with 82 million inhabitants whose dependence on Russian energy fluctuates between 55% and 45% – depending on whether it is gas, coal or oil – Habeck has announced a series of advice to its citizens on how to save on consumption. According to his calculations, each citizen can save up to 10% of energy simply by taking a little care of his daily habits. The catalog of tips is still under development, but it is assumed that they will go from using public transport or cycling to practicing “energy efficiency” at home, conveniently insulating the home against cold or heat, instead of spending excessively in heating or air conditioning.