From left: Markus Soeder, chairman of Bavarians Christian Social Union party, Christian Democratic Union party chairman Friedrich Merz and the Social Democratic Party leaders Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken, attend a news conference in Berlin, Germany, Saturday, March 8, 2025. [AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber]<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s Social Democratic Party (SPD) membership has voted by a clear majority in favor of a coalition government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union\/Christian Social Union (CDU\/CSU). No technical barriers now stand in the way of the election of CDU leader Friedrich Merz as German Chancellor on May 6.<\/p>\n
SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch announced on Wednesday that 56 percent of the 358,000 members took part in the vote. This is significantly less than in the corresponding membership votes in 2013 and 2018, when 78 percent cast their vote in each case. Of the participants, 84.6 percent approved the coalition agreement.<\/p>\n
The SPD\u2019s participation in government under Merz marks a new stage in the decline of the party, whose history began more than 150 years ago under the banner of Marxism. The Merz government is without doubt the most right-wing and anti-working class government in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its most important goal is to throw off all the shackles that were placed on German militarism because of its crimes in the Second World War. To this end, the Bundestag (Federal Parliament) passed war credits amounting to \u20ac1 trillion on March 18.<\/p>\n
The return to militarism goes hand in hand with the adoption of the far-right Alternative for Germany\u2019s (AfD) program of domestic state repression as well as its anti-refugee and retrograde cultural policy. Some members of the government, such as Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and State Secretary for Culture Wolfram Weimer, are on the far right of the political spectrum. Chancellor Merz himself is a man of the financial oligarchy. He headed the German branch of Blackrock, the world\u2019s largest asset manager, for four years.<\/p>\n
In the new government, the SPD is responsible for rearmament and social spending cuts. It will head the defense, finance and labor ministries. Although the names of the future SPD ministers will not be announced until next Monday, it is already clear that party leader Lars Klingbeil will be the new Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister. In this role, he will be responsible for imposing the cost of exploding military spending and the consequences of the international trade war on the working population.<\/p>\n
Only a few specific social spending cuts are mentioned in the coalition agreement. They primarily affect the poorest members of society, who can already afford less and less and whose numbers are growing rapidly: recipients of the citizens\u2019 benefit and refugees. According to the Parit\u00e4tischer Gesamtverband welfare association, the proportion of poor people in the population rose from 14.4 percent to 15.5\u00a0 percent or 13 million people in 2024 compared to the previous year.<\/p>\n
All other social spending is either subject to funding provisos or the deliberations of special commissions to finalise cuts. This means that they will fall victim to the red pen if the economic situation continues to deteriorate, as is already foreseeable.<\/p>\n
Long-time SPD functionary Ralf Stegner, who for some inexplicable reason describes himself as a \u201cleftist,\u201d justified the approval of the Merz government by saying that otherwise the field would be left to the right-wing extremists from the AfD. This would be absolutely unacceptable, he added.<\/p>\n