Accepting the risk of erring ” “

There are various ways of interpreting the result of the political elections held in Germany on 22 September. The most immediate result is the reconfirmation, albeit precarious, of the previous coalition between the Social Democrats of Gerhard Schroeder and the “Greens” of Joschka Fischer (the real victor in the poll): nothing, apparently, seems to have changed in the government of the country. But the factor of weakness consists in the presence of a parliamentary opposition of no less than 247 MPs of the CDU-CSU (to which should be added the 47 Liberals, against the 305 of the majority): a Union which has now overcome the consequences of the slush fund scandal connected with former chancellor Helmut Kohl, and which controls the other federal Chamber, the Bundesrat. German society is, in effect, divided into two blocs: the one moderately conservative, the other moderately progressive. Nor was it by chance that the extreme right was wiped out in the poll, while the Communist left was shut out by the mechanism of the electoral laws (it will not enter Parliament though it has a percentage of vote equivalent to that of the League in Italy). It is difficult to speak of contrasting “blueprints for society” as the basic difference between the two political line-ups. A little more liberalism and flexibility in labour relations and greater economic efficiency is the prescription of the Christian Democrats; though Edmund Stoiber, their candidate, in the management of affairs in Bavaria as minister president, may be considered an exponent of the command economy. A little more concern for the welfare state is the prescription of the SPD and the Greens; but it should not be forgotten that Schroeder has made many concessions (with some grumbles on the part of the trades-unions) to the private sector with generous tax and other relief for industries that invest capital abroad. The only electorally paying masterstroke was inflicted by Schroeder, by intervening so promptly after the floods that brought the country, and especially the former East Germany, to its knees. Not even the international positions of the two line-ups help to explain the victory of the one and the defeat of the other. Perhaps Schroeder was more determined in opposing the idea of embarking on a preventive war on Iraq; but Stoiber merely held his tongue, given that an attitude of open support for American belligerence would have been electorally damaging. On Europe, the two condidates seem to have been rather vague and not very loquacious; both the one and the other told Romano Prodi, in private conversations, that they had no intention of denouncing the stability pact. And Germany, irrespective of the winner, was rewarded by the most recent decisions of the European Union to defer the deadline for bringing the public accounts into balance. Curiously it seems that little scope was offered in the electoral campaign for ethical issues, in spite of the presentation by the German Episcopal Conference of a kind of “vademecum” aimed at guiding voters in the choice of programmes and candidates. The red-green Bundestag had approved laws that clashed with ordinary Christian sentiments (homosexual unions, the legalization of prostitution), but the community of the faithful had not strongly and unanimously supported other principles: and the “skeletons in the cupboard” also had a negative impact on electoral choices. All this does have an explanation: the two coalitions of forces wanted to ensure their survival at the centre of the political spectrum, in a campaign that took place with exemplary correctness, apart from sometimes acrimonious verbal clashes. We must be grateful for this. Once upon a time Germany was a problem for Europe and for the world. No longer. There is, it is true, a “bipolar” interpretation of the results: namely, that the German vote would halt the tendency to a single moderate thought in Europe by becoming the pole of attraction for the Nordic democracies and tomorrow perhaps for the “Eastern bloc”, in opposition to the Mediterranean area of the continent. But this is a risk of polarization confined essentially to the abstract categories of the politologists, who ought instead to explain the anomaly of the Franco-German axis, the convergences between London, Madrid and Rome, the “marriages de convenience” that are from time to time formed in the most disparate situations. And, meantime, the results of the German elections are slowly disappearing from the news: like everything normal.