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      After Months, a ‘New’ Dutch Coalition With the Same Leader and Parties

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      Mark Rutte, who has weathered a scandal and criticism for overstaying his welcome, will be prime minister for a fourth term.After nine months of negotiations among a group of fractious political parties after an election in the spring, the Netherlands finally has a new government.But it will not have a new leader; that position has been taken by Mark Rutte, who will be starting a fourth term as prime minister. It is a testament to his ability to weather crises and shake off a scandal that brought down his previous coalition last January — earning him the nickname “Teflon Mark.”Mr. Rutte’s party will be in coalition with the same two centrist parties and a more right-leaning Christian party that made up the last government.“It took too long,” Mr. Rutte acknowledged in brief remarks when announcing the formation of the four-party coalition that will be led by his Party for Freedom and Democracy. Mr. Rutte, who is known for his sober lifestyle, has been leading the Netherlands since 2010, and he has been criticized in recent years for clinging to power. He has said that he will lead the country with renewed “zeal.”The road to Mr. Rutte’s fourth term started after his previous cabinet resigned over a scandal involving overzealous tax authorities who had hunted down a number of innocent families, often after racial profiling, and accused them of falsely claiming child care benefits. Many were forced to repay huge amounts of money, reducing them to ruin.But Mr. Rutte faced perhaps the biggest crisis in his career as the country’s caretaker prime minister after the resignation of his cabinet amid widespread calls for systematic change in the Netherlands and for his departure from the political stage. But he weathered the criticism, and opposition from the far-right parties that have been gaining ground in the Netherlands in recent years; he won the March elections by a landslide.On Wednesday, Mr. Rutte and other leaders in his centrist coalition announced that an extra 35 billion euros, about $40 billion, would be allocated over the coming 10 years to help Dutch people make the transition to greater energy efficiency as part of efforts to tackle climate change.The government said it also planned to free up more money to address housing shortages, health care and education and more subsidies for child care, areas that Mr. Rutte’s previous administration had been criticized for cutting back.“Rutte came in as a budget hawk,” who trimmed government spending and increased some taxes, said Tom-Jan Meeus, a political columnist for the newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “Now he is advocating spending, also because that was the only way to get other parties on board with another term of him leading the government.”Talks with coalition partners dragged on for months, highlighting the increasing complexity of forming coalition governments in a changing political landscape with the emergence of populists and fringe parties. In the Netherlands and other northern European countries, traditional parties have lost lots of ground to numerous smaller parties, making it harder and harder to form compromise governments.The departure of Angela Merkel, who led Germany for 16 years, makes Mr. Rutte one of the longest continuously serving leaders in Europe. He shares that position with one of his political enemies, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, who has been his country’s leader continuously since 2010.In June, Mr. Rutte challenged Mr. Orban to “leave the European Union,” after Hungary created a law that several other European countries said undermined the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people. Mr. Orban later replied that he was persuaded that Mr. Rutte “hated” him. More

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      Macron and Scholz Meet and Call for More ‘European Sovereignty’

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      The new German chancellor made his first foreign stop in Paris, where the two leaders discussed a more independent, bolder Europe.PARIS — On the face of it, President Emmanuel Macron, a showman, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a study in reserve, would not be natural companions. But the world has changed, and for France and Germany the imperative of building what they call a “sovereign Europe” has become overwhelming.So Mr. Scholz, who took over from Angela Merkel on Wednesday, chose France as his first foreign destination, not only because that tends to be what newly installed German chancellors do, but also because, as he said standing beside Mr. Macron in Paris on Friday, “We want to reinforce Europe, work together for European sovereignty.”The two men, who first met in Hamburg, Germany, in 2014, held a working lunch at the presidential palace that reflected “the essential need to meet quickly,” as Mr. Scholz put it afterward at a 20-minute news conference. “Our first exchanges demonstrated a solid convergence of views,” Mr. Macron said.Their tone was serious but convivial, with Mr. Macron referring repeatedly to “dear Olaf” and using the less formal “tu,” rather than “vous,” when addressing the chancellor. At the end of the news conference they fist-bumped — a far cry from the image of President François Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl holding hands on the battlefield of Verdun in 1984, but a Covid-era indication of friendship.Mr. Scholz’s embrace of “European sovereignty” was surely music to Mr. Macron’s ears, as the French president prepares to take over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union on Jan. 1. The bloc faces an immediate crisis as Russia builds up troops on the Ukrainian border and the pandemic refuses to wane.Asked about the Russian buildup, Mr. Scholz said, “It is clear to all of us that there is no alternative to de-escalation.” Mr. Macron, who seemed skeptical of any imminent Russian threat, said, “We must avoid all useless tension.”Mr. Macron’s vision for a Europe of “power,” backed by real European military and technological capacity, tends toward the grandiose. Mr. Scholz may not like that style — his German government coalition prefers the more prosaic “enhancing European capacity to act” — but the general goal is intensely shared, perhaps more so than in the later Merkel years or at any time since the Cold War.The distance from shared goals to shared action in the European Union is always great because 27 countries have to be aligned. Still, the trauma of Covid-19 and its accompanying economic challenges have brought urgency, as has a sense of European vulnerability in a more unstable world where American leadership is no longer assured.Demonstrations in Frankfurt last week after Germany imposed new Covid regulations.Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters“I’m more optimistic than I was with Ms. Merkel toward the end,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, a veteran German diplomat. “We have a window of opportunity.”That window may be narrow. Any joint Franco-German plans could be rudely interrupted in April if Mr. Macron is defeated in the French presidential election. He is the favorite, but if France lurched toward the ascendant nationalist hard right, all bets would be off.A German priority in the coming months will be to avoid that outcome, making accommodating gestures toward Mr. Macron more likely.France and Germany have always been the motor of European integration; when they stall, so does the whole project. Although the need to confront the pandemic brought budgetary breakthroughs, Europe has found itself in the shadow of Brexit and internal division while China rose and the United States turned its attention elsewhere.The 177-page coalition agreement of Mr. Scholz’s three-party government alludes to ultimate evolution toward a “federal European state.” Mr. Macron, with the election in mind, has not gone that far — the French attachment to the nation is fierce — but the mere German mention of a United States of Europe suggests new boldness and revived ambition.Still, there are differences. Where Mr. Macron speaks of European “strategic autonomy,” Mr. Scholz prefers “strategic sovereignty.” The difference is not small.“Germans do not want strategic autonomy if that means independence from the United States,” said Cathryn Clüver, the director of the German Council on Foreign Relations.The French president offered some de rigueur praise of NATO when laying out his European presidency program on Thursday. He said it had proved its “usefulness.” But he broadly views European independence as an emancipation from the United States.Germany, intensely attached for historical reasons to the American anchor of European security, is wary of any strategic distancing from Washington. This view is broadly shared in several European Union states, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, especially at a time when Russian troops are massed on the Ukrainian border.All this complicates both the meaning and the attainability of whatever European sovereignty may be.A Christmas market in Paris last week as virus cases were rising in Europe.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockFrance and Germany share the view that they preserved a multilateral global system based on the rule of law and Western values while the United States, under former President Donald J. Trump, embraced nationalism and disparaged Europe.Understand Germany’s New GovernmentCard 1 of 6The post-Merkel era begins. More

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      German Election Heralds Messier Politics and Weaker Leadership After Merkel

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      Preliminary results indicated an outcome so tight that it could take months of talks to form a new government at a critical moment for Europe.BERLIN — After 16 years of Angela Merkel as their chancellor, Germans scattered their votes across the political spectrum on Sunday in the election to replace her, a fractured return that heralds a messier political era in Germany and weaker German leadership in Europe.Preliminary official results gave the center-left Social Democrats a lead of 1.6 percentage points, an outcome so close that no one could yet say who the next chancellor would be nor what the next government would look like.The only thing that seemed clear was that it would take weeks if not months of haggling to form a coalition, leaving Europe’s biggest democracy suspended in a kind of limbo at a critical moment when the continent is still struggling to recover from the pandemic and France — Germany’s partner at the core of Europe — faces divisive elections of its own next spring.Sunday’s election signaled the end of an era for Germany and for Europe. For over a decade, Ms. Merkel was not just chancellor of Germany but effectively the leader of Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises and in the process helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since two world wars.Her time in office was characterized above all by stability. Her center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union, has governed in Germany for 52 of the 72 postwar years, traditionally with one smaller party. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany clenching her hands as she listened to speeches on Sunday at her party headquarters in Berlin after parliamentary elections.Markus Schreiber/Associated PressBut the campaign proved to be the most volatile in decades. Armin Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, was long seen as the front-runner until a series of blunders compounded by his own unpopularity eroded his party’s lead. Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic candidate, was counted out altogether before his steady persona led his party to a spectacular 10-point comeback. And the Greens, who briefly led the polls early on, fell short of expectations but recorded their best result ever.On Sunday, the Christian Democrats’ share of the vote collapsed well below 30 percent, heading toward the worst showing in their history. For the first time since the 1950s, at least three parties will be needed to form a coalition — and both main parties are planning to hold competing talks to do so.“It’s so unprecedented that it’s not even clear who talks with whom on whose invitation about what, because the Constitution does not have guardrails for a situation like that,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the Berlin-based vice president of the German Marshall Fund, a research group.Even before the first official returns were announced, the battle lines were drawn as both main contenders to succeed Ms. Merkel as chancellor announced their claims to the top job — and their intention to fight for it. A long tradition of deferential, consensus-driven politics was quickly evaporating, giving way to a more raucous tone.At the headquarters of the Social Democrats in Berlin, loud cheering erupted when the first exit polls were announced. “The S.P.D. is back!” Lars Klingbeil, the party’s general secretary, told the crowd of party members, before Mr. Scholz took the stage with his wife and insisted “that the next chancellor is called Olaf Scholz.”Across town, at the conservative headquarters, Mr. Laschet, the candidate of Ms. Merkel’s party, made clear who he thought the next chancellor should be, saying, “We will do everything to form a government.”The unpopularity of Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union candidate, appears to have dragged the party down.Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersIt is a messy set of circumstances likely to complicate the negotiations to form a government. And whoever ends up being chancellor will have not just a weaker mandate — but less time to spend on leading in Europe, analysts said.“Germany will be absent in Europe for a while,” said Andrea Römmele, dean of the Hertie School in Berlin. “And whoever becomes chancellor is likely to be a lot more distracted by domestic politics.”The election’s outcome gives significant leverage to the two smaller parties that are almost certain to be part of any new government: the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. Courted by both Mr. Scholz and Mr. Laschet, they have signaled they will first talk among themselves.“Two Maybe-Chancellors and Two Kingmakers,” read one headline of the German public broadcaster ARD.The murky outcome made for a tense night of election-watching in the Pankow district of Berlin. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesIn one way Sunday’s returns were an expression of how disoriented voters are by the departure of Ms. Merkel, who is leaving office as the most popular politician in her country.The chancellor oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expanded by more than a fifth, pushing unemployment to the lowest levels since the 1980s.As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, Britain gambled its future on a referendum to leave the European Union and France failed to reform itself, Ms. Merkel’s Germany was mostly a haven of stability.“She was the steady hand at the helm, the steady presence,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund.“Now there is an uneasiness about what comes next,” he said. “The presence and reputation of this chancellor is outsized and very hard to emulate.”That explains why both main candidates to succeed her mostly ran on platforms of continuity rather than change, attempting where possible to signal they would be the one most like the departing chancellor.“This election campaign was basically a contest for who could be the most Merkel-like,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said.Even Mr. Scholz, whose center-left party is the traditional opposition party to Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, played up his role as finance minister in the departing government rather than his own party’s sensibilities, which are well to the left of his own.Inside a polling station, a gym at a secondary school in Berlin Neukölln on Sunday morning.Lena Mucha for The New York Times“Stability, not change, was his promise,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff. The distinctive political tradition of the Federal Republic of Germany is change through consensus.In the four decades it was split from the Communist East, West Germany had strong governments, traditionally formed by one of the two larger parties teaming up with a smaller partner or, in rare circumstances, the two big parties forming a grand coalition. This tradition was continued after reunification in 1990, with far-reaching changes — like the labor market reforms of the early 2000s — often carried out with support from across the aisle.But four parties have become seven and the two traditional main parties have shrunk, changing the arithmetic of forming a government that represents more than 50 percent of the vote. In the future, analysts say, three or four, not two, parties, will have to find enough common ground to govern together.Some analysts say this increasing fragmentation of Germany’s political landscape has the potential to revitalize politics by bringing more voices into the public debate. But it will no doubt make governing harder, as Germany becomes more like other countries in Europe — among them, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands — that have seen a similar fracturing. And messier politics could make the next chancellor weaker.Ms. Merkel has embodied the tradition of consensus more than perhaps any of her predecessors. Of her four terms in office, she spent three in a grand coalition with her party’s traditional opponents, the Social Democrats. When he took the stage at S.P.D. headquarters on Sunday evening, Olaf Scholz insisted “that the next chancellor is called Olaf Scholz.” Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesGoverning as Ms. Merkel’s junior partners almost killed the Social Democrats, Germany’s oldest party, stripping it of its identity and its place as the leading voice of center-left opposition. But Mr. Scholz used his cozy relationship with the chancellor to his advantage, effectively running as an incumbent in a race without one.At party headquarters on Sunday night, he was being celebrated as a savior by party members who were adamant that the chancellery was theirs.“The S.P.D. is the winner here,” insisted Karsten Hayde, a longtime party member, while Ernst-Ingo Lind, who works for a parliamentarian, said that only a year ago, he would “not have dreamed of being here.”Among the parties represented in the next German Parliament is the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which shocked the nation four years ago by becoming the first far-right party to win seats there since World War II. Its vote share slipped to 10.5 percent from almost 13 percent in 2017 and it will no longer be the country’s main opposition party. But it solidified its status as a permanent force to be reckoned with. In two states in the former Communist East it came first.“We are here to stay, and we showed that today,” Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the party, told party members gathered on the outskirts of Berlin.For all the messiness of this election and Merkel nostalgia, many Germans took heart from the fact that more than eight in 10 voters had cast their ballots for a centrist party and that turnout was high.Early-morning voters in Munich. In a sign that the closest election in years had mobilized voters, turnout was expected to surpass the 76 percent recorded in 2017, when the last national elections were held.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe mobilization was palpable outside several polling stations in Berlin, where families patiently waited their turn in long lines.“It’s the beginning of a new era,” said Ms. Römmele of the Hertie School. Christopher F. Schuetze, Jack Ewing and Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin. More

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      Can Macron Lead the European Union After Merkel Retires?

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      Emmanuel Macron, the French president, would love to fill the German chancellor’s shoes. But a Europe with no single, central figure may be more likely.PARIS — After Germans vote on Sunday and a new government is formed, Chancellor Angela Merkel will leave office after 16 years as the dominant figure in European politics. It is the moment that Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has been waiting for.The German chancellor, though credited for navigating multiple crises, was long criticized for lacking strategic vision. Mr. Macron, whose more swaggering style has sometimes ruffled his European partners — and Washington — has put forward ideas for a more independent and integrated Europe, better able to act in its own defense and its own interests.But as the Anglo-American “betrayal” in the Australian submarine affair has underscored, Mr. Macron sometimes possesses ambitions beyond his reach. Despite the vacuum Ms. Merkel leaves, a Macron era is unlikely to be born.Instead, analysts say, the European Union is heading for a period of prolonged uncertainty and potential weakness, if not necessarily drift. No one figure — not even Mr. Macron, or a new German chancellor — will be as influential as Ms. Merkel was at her strongest, an authoritative, well-briefed leader who quietly managed compromise and built consensus among a long list of louder and more ideological colleagues.That raises the prospect of paralysis or of Europe muddling through its challenges — on what to do about an increasingly indifferent America, on China and Russia, and on trade and technology — or even of a more dangerous fracturing of the bloc’s always tentative unity.And it will mean that Mr. Macron, who is himself up for re-election in April and absorbed in that uncertain campaign, will need to wait for a German government that may not be in place until January or longer, and then work closely with a weaker German chancellor.“We’ll have a weak German chancellor on top of a larger, less unified coalition,’’ said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “A weaker chancellor is less capable of exerting influence in Europe, and then with the Macron election, the political cycles of these two key countries will not be in sync.”Campaign posters this month in Berlin showing the top candidates for chancellor: Olaf Scholz, Armin Laschet and Annalena Baerbock.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockThe uncertainty is likely to last until after the French parliamentary elections in June — and that’s presuming Mr. Macron wins.Mr. Macron has argued forcefully that Europe must do more to protect its own interests in a world where China is rising and the United States is focusing on Asia. His officials are already trying to prepare the ground on some key issues, looking forward to January, when France takes over the rotating European Union presidency. But given the likelihood of lengthy coalition talks in Germany, the window for accomplishment is narrow.Mr. Macron will need German help. While France and Germany together can no longer run the European Union by themselves, when they agree, they tend to bring the rest of the bloc along with them.So building a relationship with the new German chancellor, even a weaker one, will be a primary goal for Mr. Macron. He must be careful, noted Daniela Schwarzer, executive director for Europe and Eurasia of the Open Societies Foundations, not to scare off the Germans.“Macron’s leadership is disruptive, and the German style is to change institutions incrementally,” she said. “Both sides will need to think through how they make it possible for the other side to answer constructively.’’French officials understand that substantive change will be slow, and they will want to build on initiatives already underway, like the analysis of Europe’s interests called “the strategic compass” and a modest but steady increase in military spending on new capabilities through the new European Defense Fund and a program called Pesco, intended to promote joint projects and European interoperability.After the humiliation of the scuttled submarine deal, when Australia suddenly canceled a contract with France and chose a deal with Britain and the United States instead, many of his European colleagues are more likely now to agree with Mr. Macron that Europe must be less dependent on Washington and spend at least a little more in its own defense.Few in Europe, though, want to permanently damage ties with the Americans and NATO.“Italy wants a stronger Europe, OK, but in NATO — we’re not on the French page on that,” said Marta Dassu, a former Italian deputy foreign minister and director of European affairs at the Aspen Institute.Troops from a European tank battalion that consists of Dutch and German soldiers.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesMario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, whose voice is respected in Brussels, believes strongly in the trans-Atlantic relationship, she said, adding: “We’re closer to Germany than to France, but without all the ambiguities on Russia and China.’’France also wants to become more assertive using the economic and financial tools Europe already has, especially trade and technology, the officials say. The point, they say, is not to push too hard too fast, but to raise the European game vis-à-vis China and the United States, and try to encourage a culture that is comfortable with power.But France’s German partners will themselves be going through a period of uncertainty and transition. A new German chancellor is expected to win only a quarter of the vote, and may need to negotiate a coalition agreement among three different political parties. That is expected to take at least until Christmas, if not longer.The new chancellor will also need to get up to speed on European issues, which barely surfaced in the campaign, and build credibility as the newcomer among 26 other leaders.“So it’s important now to start thinking of concrete French-German wins during a French presidency that Macron can use in a positive way in his campaign,” Ms. Schwarzer said. “Because Berlin does not want to ponder a scenario in which Macron loses” to the far-right Marine Le Pen or in which Euro-skeptics like Matteo Salvini take over in Italy.Whoever wins, German policy toward Europe will remain roughly the same from a country deeply committed to E.U. ideals, cautious and wanting to preserve stability and unity. The real question is whether any European leader can be the cohesive force Ms. Merkel was — and if not, what it will mean for the continent’s future.“Merkel herself was important in keeping the E.U. together,” said Ulrich Speck of the German Marshall Fund. “She kept in mind the interests of so many in Europe, especially Central Europe but also Italy, so that everyone could be kept on board.’’Ms. Merkel saw the European Union as the core of her policy, said a senior European official, who called her the guardian of true E.U. values, willing to bend to keep the bloc together, as evidenced by her support for collective debt, previously a German red line, to fund the coronavirus recovery fund.“Merkel acted as mediator when there have been a lot of centrifugal forces weakening Europe,’’ said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “It’s less clear how the next chancellor will position himself or herself and Germany.’’Still, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted that “whoever is the chancellor, Germany is still responsible for more than half of Chinese trade with Europe.’’ Germany is “vastly more important than the other countries on all the big issues, from how to handle China to the tech wars and climate change,’’ he said.President Xi Jinping of China, upper left, and European leaders discussing an investment deal last year.Pool photo by Johanna GeronThat means Mr. Macron “knows he has to channel German power behind his vision,’’ he said.But French and Italian positions will be crucial, too, on important pending financial issues, like fiscal and banking integration, trying to complete the single market and monitoring the pandemic recovery fund.Ms. Merkel’s departure may provide an opportunity for the kinds of change Mr. Macron desires, even if in vastly scaled-down version. Ms. Merkel’s love of the status quo, some analysts argue, was anachronistic at a time when Europe faces so many challenges.Perhaps most important is the looming debate about whether to alter Europe’s spending rules, which in practical terms means getting agreement from countries to spend more on everything from defense to climate.The real problem is that fundamental change would require a treaty change, said Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a Brussels research institution. “You can’t have fiscal and defense integration by stealth,’’ he said. “It won’t have legitimacy and won’t be accepted by citizens.’’But the German election debates ignored these broad issues, he said.“The sad news,” Mr. Wolff said, “is that none of the three chancellor candidates campaigned on any of this, so my baseline expectation is continued muddling forward.” More

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      Angela Merkel Is Leaving. It’s Time.

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      BERLIN — In central Berlin, a giant billboard shows a pair of hands, arranged in the shape of a diamond, in front of a female torso dressed in a green jacket. “Tschüss Mutti,” the billboard reads. “Bye, bye, Mommy.”Even without a face, Germans know who’s being depicted. The diamond, the colorful jacket and the word “Mutti” are iconic, just like Angela Merkel herself.After 16 years, Germany is saying “Tschüss” to its longtime chancellor. Across the country, the departure of Ms. Merkel has brought out affectionate nostalgia, tinged with a drop of irony. Yet there’s also fatigue, verging on irritation, a twitchy restlessness to see her off and start afresh. As with most farewells, feelings are mixed.For Ms. Merkel, a leader who never sought acclaim, a low-key, almost ambivalent exit feels fitting. But it also reveals an irony about her rule. The qualities that ensured her success — her caution and consistency, her firmness and diligence — are now, at the end of her tenure, leading some to regard her departure with relief. The Germany Ms. Merkel made, in nearly two decades of steady stewardship, is ready to move on.For all her calm, Ms. Merkel’s time in charge has not been without tumult. She steered Germany through a series of crises — the financial crash in 2008, the euro debt crisis that followed, the migration crisis of 2015 and, of course, the pandemic. She brokered a truce, albeit a brittle one, between Russia and Ukraine, helped to negotiate Brexit and saw Donald Trump come and go. Each event had the potential to sunder the world. In part thanks to Ms. Merkel, none did.Her role in these crises continues to be debated. Many progressives maintain that her austerity policies have done more harm than good, and many conservatives believe she should have closed Germany’s borders to migrants in 2015. The overall verdict, though, is unlikely to change. Under great pressure, Ms. Merkel was a conservative in the best sense, retaining the country’s prosperity, cohesion and purpose. Her great achievement was not what she built, but what she managed to keep.Yet preservation can quickly turn to stagnation. Many of Ms. Merkel’s policies that had an initially stabilizing effect carried hidden long-term costs. And at the very moment she is about to leave office, that’s starting to show. Her “sins of omission” — as a British historian and Germany expert, Timothy Garton Ash, put it to me — are becoming painfully obvious.Take Europe. Across nearly two decades, Ms. Merkel played an outsize role in guiding the union through a succession of challenges. But in the process, she stored up future problems.In 2016, for example, the chancellor spearheaded a deal with Turkey to take in refugees. The move ended the yearlong migration crisis, in which more than a million migrants claimed asylum in Europe. But it’s hardly a sustainable solution, neither for Turkey — where economic difficulties and growing numbers of refugees threaten to destabilize the country — nor for Europe. Migrants, especially after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country, will continue to seek refuge on the continent. Some workable solution, attentive to the needs of both migrants and citizens, must be found.In other areas, too, Ms. Merkel’s approach fell short. Her handling of the euro debt crisis helped secure the future of the bloc, but at the cost of leaving the underlying dynamics — overindebted southern countries and an unbalanced monetary union — untouched. Her conciliatory approach to Russia, not least over the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, looks ever more untenable as President Vladimir Putin ruthlessly consolidates his regime.And while her inclination to avoid censuring Hungary and Poland for their breaches of the rule of law protected the bloc against disintegration, it sidestepped essential questions about the character of Europe. In Ms. Merkel’s absence, European leaders — including Germany’s next chancellor, whoever that is — will need to determine the bloc’s future course. How will it navigate the increased rivalry between America and China? To what extent will it embark on a more autonomous defense strategy? And how will it combat the rise of the far right?At home, a similar pattern prevailed. Look at the economy. Yes, Germany’s export surplus came to an all-time high during Ms. Merkel’s tenure, and G.D.P. reached a record high in 2019. But it has come at the cost of an increased — some say excessive — dependence on the Chinese market, something Ms. Merkel has done little to address. What’s more, by shielding Germany’s car industry from more ambitious carbon-emission goals, Ms. Merkel has in effect exonerated managers from the need to innovate. That’s one reason German car companies are scrambling to keep up with their American and Chinese counterparts.Then there’s climate change. Trying to protect key industries and fearing to impose too much change on voters, Ms. Merkel refrained from any far-reaching plan to cut emissions until late in her tenure. And though the share of renewable energy grew to 45 percent during her time in office, many experts agree that on its current trajectory, the country will not meet its goal of being carbon-neutral by 2045. Despite being seen abroad as the “climate chancellor,” Ms. Merkel has taken only very minor steps toward confronting the defining issue of our time.It all adds up to a country at once cozy and cosseted, ignorant of the dangers waiting in the wings. Ursula Weidenfeld, an economics journalist and the author of a recent biography of the chancellor, has likened Ms. Merkel’s Germany to the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” Peaceful and prosperous, soothingly old-fashioned, self-satisfied to the point of delusion and naïve in a likable yet unnerving way: The analogy is apt.Ms. Merkel protected the Shire, which is what Germans expected of her and why she won four national elections in a row. But in doing so, she fostered its peculiar detachment from the world and its unwillingness to change, innovate or even discuss different ways forward.The chancellor also became stuck in her ways. Humble and unpretentious, she saw herself as a servant to her country. But in return for her service, dedication and competence, she came to expect — demand, even — blind trust. She has grown increasingly impatient with the forever chatter of Germany’s political class.Her famous phrase during the migration crisis — “We can do this” — was to some a welcome dose of optimism. But to others, not least in her own party, it was a decree, a royal diktat from above silencing opposition and curtailing debate. Perhaps that tendency hardened over time. Ahead one of the endless meetings with Germany’s 16 governors during the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, she reportedly complained about the “orgies of debates on reopening the country.”It was an unusual outburst, one that underscored a growing unease about her methods and her achievements. After all, the pandemic exposed Germany’s lack of digital services, the need to modernize its public health service and the vulnerability of the economy’s supply chains. The floods in July, in which over 200 people lost their lives, were a tragic reminder that Germany will not be spared the perils of climate change. Against this backdrop, the prospect of change — no matter how familiar the candidates — has become more appealing.Just a couple of years ago, Ms. Merkel was garlanded as the “leader of the free world.” Against the chaos and disruption of Mr. Trump, her sober, judicious style was widely envied. Now, in a twist of history, different qualities are wanted. I’m pretty sure there will be many moments in the not-too-distant future when Germans will painfully miss Angela Merkel. And yet: It is time. Tschüss Mutti.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Germany’s Far Right Is Nowhere in the Election. But It’s ‘Here to Stay.’

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      In the next national Parliament, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is likely to remain a pariah force. But it looks assured, too, of a role in shaping the country’s future.BERLIN — They promised they would “hunt” the elites. They questioned the need for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin and described Muslim immigrants as “head scarf girls” and “knife men.”Four years ago the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, arrived in the German Parliament like a wrecking ball, the first far-right party to win a place at the heart of Germany’s democracy since World War II. It was a political earthquake in a country that had once seen Hitler’s Nazi party rise from the fringes to win power in free elections.As another election looms on Sunday, the worst fears of many Germans have not come true: Support for the party has dipped. But neither have the hopes that the AfD would disappear from the political scene as suddenly as it appeared. If Germany’s fate in this election will not be settled by the far right, political analysts say, Germany’s future will partly be shaped by it.“The AfD is here to stay,” said Matthias Quent, professor of sociology at Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences and an expert on the far right. “There was the widespread and naïve hope that this was a short-lived protest phenomenon. The reality is that the far right has become entrenched in the German political landscape.”The AfD is polling at roughly 11 percent, just below its 2017 result of 12.6 percent, and is all but guaranteed to retain its presence in Parliament. (Parties with less than 5 percent of the vote do not get any seats.) But with all other parties refusing to include the AfD in talks about forming the next governing coalition, it is effectively barred from power.“The AfD is isolated,” said Uwe Jun, a professor of political science at Trier University.Yet with Germany’s two main parties having slipped well below the 30 percent mark, the AfD remains a disruptive force, one that complicates efforts to build a governing coalition with a majority of votes and parliamentary seats. Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s two lead candidates in the election, believes that, eventually, the firewall other parties have erected against his party will crumble — most likely starting in one of the states in the former Communist East that is currently its power base.Tino Chrupalla, second from right, and other members of the AfD party before a meeting of the Parliament in Berlin last year.Michael Sohn/Associated Press“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “I’m confident that sooner or later there is no way without the AfD,” he told reporters this past week. “It will certainly start on the state level.”Founded eight years ago as nationalist free-market protest party against the Greek bailout and the euro, the AfD has sharply shifted to the right.The party seized on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome over a million migrants to Germany in 2015 and 2016, actively fanning fears of Islamization and migrant crime. Its noisy nationalism and anti-immigrant stance were what first catapulted it into Parliament and instantly turned it into Germany’s main opposition party.But the party has struggled to expand its early gains during the past 18 months, as the pandemic and, more recently, climate change have shot to the top of the list of voters’ concerns — while its core issue of immigration has barely featured in this year’s election campaign.The AfD has tried to jump on the chaos in Afghanistan to fan fears of a new migrant crisis. “Cologne, Kassel or Konstanz can’t cope with more Kabul,” one of the party’s campaign posters asserted. “Save the world? Sure. But Germany first!” another read.At a recent election rally north of Frankfurt, Mr. Chrupalla demanded that lawmakers “abolish” the constitutional right to asylum. He also told the public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Germany should be prepared to protect its borders, “if need be with armed force.”None of this rhetoric has shifted the race, particularly because voters seem to have more fundamental concerns about the party’s aura of extremism. Some AfD leaders have marched with extremists in the streets, while among the party’s supporters are an eclectic array of conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazi sympathizers.The AfD has not been linked directly to political violence, but its verbal transgressions have contributed to a normalization of violent language and coincided with a series of deadly far-right terrorist attacks.Supporters of the party at a rally in the central German city of Magdeburg this summer.Annegret Hilse/ReutersIn June 2019, a regional politician who had defended Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy was shot dead on his front porch by a well-known neo-Nazi. The killer later told the court that he had attended a high-profile AfD protest a year earlier.Since then, a far-right extremist has attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle during a Yom Kippur service, leaving two dead and only narrowly failing to commit a massacre. Another extremist shot dead 9 mostly young people with immigrant roots in the western city of Hanau.The AfD’s earlier rise in the polls stalled almost instantly after the Hanau attack.“After these three attacks, the wider German public and media realized for the first time that the rhetoric of the AfD leads to real violence,” said Hajo Funke of the Free University in Berlin, who has written extensively about the party and tracks its evolution.“It was a turning point,” he said. “They have come to personify the notion that words lead to deeds.”Shortly after the Hanau attack, Thomas Haldenwang, the chief of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, placed elements of the AfD under surveillance for far-right extremism — even as the party’s lawmakers continued to work in Parliament.“We know from German history that far-right extremism didn’t just destroy human lives, it destroyed democracy,” Mr. Haldenwang warned after announcing his decision in March last year. “Far-right extremism and far-right terrorism are currently the biggest danger for democracy in Germany.”Today, the agency has classified about a third of all AfD members as extremist, including Mr. Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, the party’s other lead candidate. A court is reviewing whether the entire party can soon be placed under formal observation.Alice Weidel, the AfD’s other co-leader, during a media conference in Berlin last month.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock“The AfD is irrelevant in power-political terms,” said Mr. Funke. “But it is dangerous.”Mr. Chrupalla, a decorator who occasionally takes the stage in his overalls, and Ms. Weidel, a suit-wearing former Goldman Sachs analyst and gay mother of two, have sought to counter that impression. As if to hammer home the point, the party’s main election slogan this year is: “Germany — but normal.”A look through the party’s 207-page election program shows what “normal” means: The AfD demands Germany’s exit from the European Union. It calls for the abolition of any mandates to fight the coronavirus. It wants to return to the traditional German definition of citizenship based on blood ancestry. And it is the only party in Parliament that denies man-made climate change, while also calling for investment in coal and a departure from the Paris climate accord.That the AfD’s polling numbers have barely budged for the past 18 months suggests that its supporters are not protest voters but Germans who subscribe to its ideas and ideology.“The AfD has brought out into the open a small but very radical electorate that many thought we don’t have in this country,” said Mr. Quent, the sociologist. “Four years ago people were asking: ‘Where does this come from?’ In reality it was always there. It just needed a trigger.”Mr. Quent and other experts estimate the nationwide ceiling of support for the party at around 14 percent. But in parts of the former Communist East, where the AfD has become a broad-based political force entrenched at the local level, it is often twice that — enough to make it the region’s second-strongest political force.Among the under 60-year olds, Mr. Quent said, it has become No. 1.“It’s only a question of time until AfD is the strongest party in the East,” Mr. Quent said.That is why Mr. Chrupalla, whose constituency is in the eastern state of Saxony, the one state where the AfD already came first in 2017, predicts it will eventually become too big to bypass.“In the East we are a people’s party, we are well-established at the local, city, regional and state level,” Mr. Chrupalla said. “In the East the middle class votes for the AfD. In the West, they vote for the Greens.”Christopher F. Schuetze More

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      in World Politics

      Why Headscarves Matter So Much to Turkey

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      Many news outlets carried stories in mid-July of the Turkish government’s condemnation of a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) upholding a ban on headscarves in certain circumstances, in which an employer wishes to convey a “neutral image.” In doing so, it is weighing into the culture wars over religious symbolism that Europeans will all be well aware of. Many European countries, in particular France, have seen high-profile clashes over the issue of religious symbols in state institutions.

      How Western Media Misunderstand Chinese Culture

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      Many readers would see Turkey’s condemnation as a simple case of an Islamist regime railing against Western suppression of Islam. Indeed, the government’s statement was full of accusations of Islamophobia in Europe. Yet such statements, coming out of Turkey, are not as simple as that.

      Those same readers might be surprised to discover that Turkey itself had banned headscarves in state institutions until very recently. This might make a governmental condemnation of a ban in Europe seem nonsensical. The reality helps to give context to the Turkish reaction.

      Wear Western Hats

      Condemnations of headscarf bans might ordinarily be expected to emanate from regimes such as the Iranian theocracy or the Saudi conservative monarchy. Coming out of the secular republic of Turkey, they might appear more curious, if it wasn’t for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s global image as a religious conservative.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      His government’s sensitivity to headscarf bans is very personal indeed. In 2006, his own and other politicians’ wives were not invited to an official event by the then-Turkish president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, due to their wearing of headscarves. In 2007, there was an attempt by the military — a traditional guardian of Turkey’s ruling secular elite — to deny the presidency to Abdullah Gul of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) because his wife wore a headscarf.

      Such attitudes, which might appear highly intolerant in countries such as the United Kingdom, make more sense in places like France where the separation of church and state is a foundation of the republic. When modern Turkey was created in 1920, France became the model for how to build a modern state. A key element in the imitation of the French was the desire of Turkey’s first military rulers to suppress Islam.

      The Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey was the successor state, was an Islamic empire. Indeed, it was ruled by a caliph, the Islamic equivalent of the pope in Rome. The caliph was the leader of the Muslim world. Turning Turkey into a modern secular republic was akin to removing the pope from the Vatican and banning the wearing of the Christian cross in Catholic Europe. Needless to say, it has created cultural fault lines in Turkey that persist to this day.

      To drive home his cultural revolution in the 1920s and 1930s, modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, instituted a ban on the fez — that most famously Turkish of hats — and the turban. He insisted on men wearing the Western brimmed hat, traditionally rejected since it doesn’t allow the wearer to bow their head to the floor in Muslim prayer whilst wearing it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The veil and headscarf were also discouraged, though the state’s ability to enforce changes in female clothing was slower to be realized than with men’s. The persistence of female cultural clothing as opposed to male could be the subject of an entire essay of its own.

      Alongside many other measures, such as the banning of the Sufi Muslim brotherhoods, the closure of mosques, a ban on the call to prayer in Arabic and the removal of the Arabic script, the Turkish authorities attempted to forcibly Westernize Turks.

      The Illiberal 1980s

      Yet it was not until the military coup d’état of 1980 that Turkey finally outlawed the headscarf officially. It was then that it was banned across all state institutions, including schools, universities, the judiciary, the police and the military. In effect, this meant that girls from religious backgrounds had to choose either to remove their headscarves or not get an education. Only with the rise of the AKP to power in the 2000s did official attitudes begin to shift.

      In 2010, Turkish universities finally admitted women who wore headscarves. This was followed a few years later by state bureaucratic institutions, except the judiciary, military and police. In 2016, policewomen were allowed to wear headscarves beneath their caps, and finally in 2017, the military was the last institution to lift the ban.

      This is the backdrop against which the Turkish government condemns a headscarf ban — in certain circumstances — decreed by the ECJ. It is a backdrop in which the religiously conservative in Turkey read a narrative of European coercion running back to the founding of the modern state and even earlier.

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      The ideas that inspired the military officers who won the Turkish War of Independence — the war with Allied powers that followed the conclusion of the First World War — were imported from Western Europe. Having carved out an almost entirely religiously homogenous Muslim state, they set out to utterly secularize it.

      The banning of the headscarf is therefore seen by religiously conservative Turks as an idea imported from Europe and, in some sense, an idea dictated to Muslims by secularized Christian nations. Given the last century of experience in Turkey, it is clear how this view is generated.

      Ultimately, the question is one of whether people who like the use of headscarves should tolerate those who don’t wear them, and whether those who dislike the use of headscarves should tolerate those who do wear them. Examples of intolerance abound on either side. A lack of understanding will bring no peace to Turkey or to countries across Europe and the world.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      Germany Floods: Climate Change Moves to Center of Campaign as Toll Mounts

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      With more than 160 dead across the region, the receding waters revealed extensive damage as well as deep political divides around how far and fast Germans should go to stem carbon use.BERLIN — With the death toll surpassing 160 and rescue efforts intensifying, the once-in-a-millennium floods that ravaged Germany and much of Western Europe this week had by Saturday thrust the issue of climate change to the center of Germany’s politics and its campaign for pivotal elections this fall that will replace Chancellor Angela Merkel after 16 years in power.The receding floodwaters revealed not only extensive damage — homes wiped away, businesses lost, electricity and sewer systems knocked out and hundreds of vehicles destroyed — but also bitter political divides on climate policy in a week when the European Union rolled out the globe’s most ambitious proposals to cut carbon emissions in the next decade.Though German authorities said it was still too early to place a figure on the damage, its sheer scale shifted the debate from calls not to politicize the catastrophe to the realization that the policies behind it must now play a central role in deciding who will take over leadership after the election on Sept. 26.“The Weather is Political,” Germany’s ARD public television said in its lead editorial on the Friday evening news.“For a long time, chatting about the weather was synonymous with triviality. That’s over now,” it said. “The weather is highly political; there is hardly any nonpolitical weather anymore, especially not during an election campaign.”Residents were clearing mud and unusable furniture from houses on Saturday in Bad Neuenahr, Germany.Thomas Frey/dpa, via Getty ImagesThe death toll in Germany climbed to at least 143 on Saturday, while the toll across the border in Belgium stood at 24, the authorities there said.On Saturday, rescue workers were still sifting through ruin across the region. The German news media was filled with images of homes still submerged in muddy brown water up to the second floor and of bridges reduced to crumbled heaps of stone or tangled metal pylons.Tales of tragedy emerged, as well, perhaps none more poignant than in Sinzig, where neighbors recalled hearing the screams from disabled residents trapped in the waters that gushed into the lower floors of the residential home where a lone night watchman was powerless to save them. The event vividly raised tough questions about whether the authorities had been prepared and why flood warnings were not acted on more aggressively by local officials.More than 90 of those who died in Germany had lived in towns and villages in the valley of the Ahr River in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the police said. Local authorities set up a hotline for citizens in the hard-hit area needing support, whether material or psychological, and issued a call for equipment to help provide basic infrastructure and even clean drinking water.The village of Sinzig, Germany, on Friday.Adam Berry/Getty ImagesMs. Merkel, who turned 67 on Saturday and has said she will leave politics after the election, was expected to visit the district on Sunday to survey the scope of the destruction, her office said. She spoke with the governor of Rhineland-Palatinate by video link on Friday, hours after touching down in Berlin from her trip to Washington.While in the United States, the chancellor and President Biden signed a pact that included a commitment to “taking urgent action to address the climate crisis,” which is to include stronger collaboration “on the policies and energy technologies needed to accelerate the global net-zero transition.”The European Union’s ambitious blueprint, announced Wednesday, is part of plans to make the 27-country bloc carbon-neutral by 2050, and will arguably affect no European country more than Germany, the continent’s largest economy and its industrial powerhouse.Coming a day later, the extensive flooding, which affected Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, in addition to Germany, immediately drew parallels between the calamity and the effects of climate change from environmental activists and wide range of politicians.Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Biden this week at the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesArmin Laschet, 60, the conservative governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, who is looking to succeed Ms. Merkel, has lauded his regional government for passing legislation on climate change, but critics point to the open-pit soft coal mines in the state that are still threatening local villages and his repeated emphasis on the importance of Germany remaining an industrial powerhouse.When pressed on Thursday during an interview on WDR local public television over whether the floods would be a catalyst for him to take a stance toward climate change, Mr. Laschet snapped at the moderator.“I am a governor, not an activist,” he said. “Just because we have had a day like this does not mean we change our politics.”But in 2011, Ms. Merkel did just that.After seeing the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, Japan, melt down after a tsunami hit, the chancellor backtracked on her government’s decision to extend the country’s dependence on nuclear power until 2033. The disaster led her to reset the target shutdown date to 2022, while increasing the amount of energy powered by renewable sources.Floods have a history of influencing political campaigns in Germany. In 2002, pictures of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder wading in rubber boots through streets awash in the muddy waters of the swollen Elbe, while his conservative rival remained on vacation, are credited with helping him win the election that year.Armin Laschet, right, the conservative governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, second right, visiting the Erftstadt fire department on Saturday.Pool photo by Marius BeckerPerhaps wary of that lesson, Annalena Baerbock, 40, who is the Greens party candidate for chancellor and Mr. Laschet’s strongest rival, cut short her vacation to visit stricken areas in Rhineland-Palatinate on Friday.She called for immediate assistance for those affected, but also issued an appeal to better protect “residential areas and infrastructure” from extreme weather events, which she linked to the changing climate.“Climate protection is now: In all areas of climate protection, we need to step up our game and take effective climate protection measures with an immediate climate protection program,” Ms. Baerbock said.Whether the flooding will be enough to lift support for the Greens remains to be seen. After enjoying an initial surge of excitement surrounding the announcement of Ms. Baerbock’s campaign — she is the only woman running to replace the country’s first female chancellor — support for the Greens has now dipped to around 20 percent in polls.That puts the party in second place behind Mr. Laschet’s conservatives, who have been climbing to around 30 percent support, the latest surveys show.“In the next two months, there will always be extreme weather events somewhere in the world,” said Thorsten Faas, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin. “The focus is set after the catastrophe in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. The topic will determine the election campaign.”Olaf Scholz, 63, Ms. Merkel’s finance minister who is running for the chance to replace her and return his Social Democratic Party to the chancellery, also headed on Friday to flooded regions in Rhineland-Palatinate, where he pledged swift help from the government and linked the disaster to climate change.Workers clearing debris from the streets on Saturday after flooding caused major damage in the village of Schuld.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I am firmly convinced that our task is stopping human-made climate change,” Mr. Scholz told ZDF public television. He praised his party’s role in passing some of Germany’s first climate laws when the Social Democrats governed with the Greens from 1998 to 2005, but called for a stronger effort to move toward a carbon-neutral economy.“What we still have to do now is get all those who have resisted right up to the end that we raise the expansion targets for renewable energies in such a way that it also works out with a CO2-neutral industry to give up this resistance,” he said.While the focus at the moment is on the role that environmental issues will play in the election campaign, questions are also being raised over whether the chancellor, who was a champion for combating climate change going back to 1995, when she presided over the United Nations’ first Climate Conference in Berlin, actually pushed her own country hard enough.Once she came into power, it proved harder to persuade her country’s powerful industrial and automobile lobbies — key supporters of her conservative party — to do their part.The result was legislation that Germany’s highest court ruled in April was not aggressive enough in its attempts to bring down emissions. It ordered the government to strengthen the law to ensure that future generations would be protected.“In recent years, we have not implemented many things in Germany that would have been necessary,” said Malu Dryer, the governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state, said in an interview with the Funke media consortium.She urged German consumers to support climate-neutral products and the country to “show more speed,” adding that climate change is no longer an abstraction. “We are experiencing it firsthand and painfully,” Ms. Dryer said.The city of Bad Münstereifel, Germany, on Friday.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMelissa Eddy More