{"id":518535,"date":"2025-10-22T02:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T02:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518535\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T02:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T02:43:11","slug":"germanys-politics-of-compromise-has-been-compromised-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518535\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s politics of compromise has been compromised \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For example, both the CDU and SPD already agree on the reintroduction of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/my-europe\/2025\/10\/15\/press-conference-cancelled-as-german-coalition-disagrees-over-military-service\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">military service<\/a> in some form, and the details being haggled over are just that \u2014 details. The fundamental question is what happens if the required threshold isn\u2019t met through voluntary recruitment. Is it a form of lottery \u2014 absurd, but under consideration \u2014 or something else? And yet, the discussions led to a public row between senior politicians.<\/p>\n<p>What Merz promised was an \u201cautumn of reforms,\u201d and these are gradually being rolled out. But instead of hailing what is being achieved, all sides are publicly complaining they haven\u2019t got what they wanted, and it\u2019s taking up all the oxygen.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, that is politics \u2014 but as ever, there\u2019s also the looming specter of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to consider. Still riding high in the polls, the party has five regional elections to look forward to in 2026, including one in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where polls predict it might even win an overall majority \u2014 an extraordinary prospect.<\/p>\n<p>And the AfD\u2019s promises, such as those to slash immigration, point to a wider phenomenon \u2014 the simplification of political solutions \u2014 which, again, brings us back to Trump. By riding roughshod over constitutional and societal norms, the U.S. president has changed both the American and global landscape in less than a year.<\/p>\n<p>The German political system, which is nearly 80 years old now, was built to withstand the exercise of muscular power. But if the very type of politics that it introduced \u2014 the politics of compromise \u2014 is now scorned by so many, the onus is on Merz and his ministers not just to deliver on policy but to clearly demonstrate that all isn\u2019t lost for the painstaking politics of reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For example, both the CDU and SPD already agree on the reintroduction of military service in some form,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[42368,6215,32,28284,2000,299,1105,1945,7336,11070,1824,70618,3976,2452,2597,7337],"class_list":{"0":"post-518535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-christian-lindner","9":"tag-cooperation","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-elections-in-europe","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-far-right","15":"tag-friedrich-merz","16":"tag-german-election-2025","17":"tag-german-politics","18":"tag-germany","19":"tag-germany-interpreted","20":"tag-governance","21":"tag-media","22":"tag-military","23":"tag-olaf-scholz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115415521948035929","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}