Farewell, Herr Scholz?

Will the German Chancellor lose power this year?

Amid a sharp deterioration in the situation in the Middle East in the first days of January, the sensational information published in the German tabloid Bild that supposedly this year German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will give way to the current Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius at the helm of the German state remained in the shadows. Earlier, the Italian La Reppublica also wrote about ‘bad rumours’ from the Bundestag.

Good reasons

The Bild newspaper also spoke about the reason why the chancellor will be retired. We are talking, firstly, about a catastrophic drop in the ratings of the Social Democrats and, secondly, about a financial scandal worth almost two billion dollars.

With the first point, everything seems to be clear. The authors of the material in Bild rely on the final rating of the popularity of political forces in Germany, published on December 31st, where the Social Democratic Party, which Scholz represents, lost five percentage points at once — now only 15 percent of Germans support their policy. The chancellor himself is doing even worse: in his personal ranking, as Der Spiegel reports, he has slipped to 14th place out of 20, while defence chief Pistorius is at the top of the list, while Sarah Wagenknecht, known for her anti-war position, is in eighth place.
The second reason to dismiss Scholz is the scandal surrounding the fraudulent scheme of the Wirecard company, which erupted back in 2020, when the current chancellor was Finance Minister in the government of Angela Merkel. Let us remember that Wirecard was engaged in issuing cryptocurrency cards and was considered one of the most successful companies in this segment. However, in the summer of 2020, the company suddenly went bankrupt — it turned out that the documentation was full of inconsistencies, and someone withdrew almost two billion euros from the accounts. Further inspection showed that all Wirecard activities strongly smacked of a fraudulent scheme. The company demonstrated success only on paper, but in reality the business became unprofitable long before bankruptcy. The icing on the cake was the fact that the company had the status of a partner of the federal government and Scholz, as part of his civil service duties, had to exercise financial control over its activities.
Scholz’s legacy from that long-standing scandal still lingers to this day: opponents never miss an opportunity to remind him of the Wirecard story.

‘Impressive’ results

However, low personal and party ratings and an unpleasant incident almost four years ago are in themselves unlikely to be the true reason for Scholz’s possible resignation. 

The problem is actually much deeper and lies in the inability of the current chancellor to effectively manage the state entrusted to him.

Scholz is weighed down by the burden of economic problems that he himself has placed on his shoulders and on the shoulders of every German personally. We are, of course, talking about the notorious sanctions against Belarus and Russia, which turned into a terrible blow to the economy of Germany itself. The rejection of connections that had been established over decades triggered a domino effect: first, exports and imports dropped significantly, then enterprises important for the economy began to close or move to other countries, and unemployment increased — from December 2022 to December 2023, 186 thousand Germans lost a stable income, which brought the total the number of unemployed up to 2.7 million.
Blindly following instructions from Washington led to the fact that a number of German industrial giants were forced to close production and radically reduce staff — including the largest ammonia producer SKW Sticksoffwerke Piesteritz, the world leader in the market for the production of optics for the visually impaired Eschenbach Optik, and chip supplier Hellma Materials. Other companies, like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Bayer, as predicted back in the fall of 2022, are gradually moving production to the USA, where they are lured by low taxes and cheap energy.
Trying to plug holes in the state budget, the Scholz government found nothing better than getting into the pocket of a respectable burgher. The list of new taxes that Berlin has ‘delighted’ citizens with only recently can be long and persistent. Consider, for example, the increase in VAT on gas and centralised heating from 7 to 19 percent. VAT on kindergarten and school meals has increased similarly. Taxes on carbon emissions, trucks and real estate have all risen sharply. A high-profile law on heat supply came into force, obliging, from January 1st, to install only heating systems powered by 65 percent renewable fuel sources.

The people are indignant

Scholz and his government never took any clear measures against forced deindustrialisation. Moreover, the terrorist attack on Nord Stream also remained unanswered, although it seems that even small children know the organisers of the sabotage and their motives.

There are also serious complaints against Scholz regarding the situation in Ukraine. The desire to please both the Washington overlord and not to completely quarrel with his own opposition has led to a paradoxical result: on the one hand, Berlin is one of the most active sponsors of the Zelensky regime, and on the other hand, it is constantly under fire for refusing to supply Taurus cruise missiles, which Kiev is going to use it in an attempt to massively attack the Crimean Bridge.

Rumours about Scholz’s possible resignation emerged amid a large-scale strike that swept across Germany from January 7th-8th. Literally everyone is on strike: from bus drivers to farmers and catering workers. The main complaint is the decline in living standards amid the chancellor’s statements about continued support for Ukraine. Experts note that publications in Bild and other publications may be placed deliberately, preparing public opinion in case it is not possible to contain popular discontent and a solution has to be sought in Scholz’s resignation.
However, this scenario is still unlikely: the security bloc makes no attempts to disobey, and the Social Democrats, although dissatisfied with the drop in ratings, are not ready to lose their homes by throwing out their appointee in the chancellor’s chair.

Six of one and half a dozen of the other 

Changing Scholz as chancellor at the moment does not seem to be the most likely event. This character of the German politician is primarily convenient for the United States, which, with the hands of a Social Democrat, successfully dismantled the largest economy in the eurozone, and now plans to use the remaining resources to assist Ukraine until the internal political situation in Washington becomes clearer.
“Germany must be ready to increase aid to Ukraine when others begin to waver,” Herr Scholz said at the Social Democratic Party congress in Berlin in early December.

However, even if he leaves his post, it is unlikely that Germany will face tectonic shifts in domestic and foreign policy. 

The likely replacement, Boris Pistorius, is a notorious militarist who believes that in 5-8 years NATO will face Russia on the battlefield, for which he called for immediate preparation. He is also the main lobbyist for the deployment of a German brigade in Lithuania, the first unit of this level to be permanently stationed outside German borders after World War II.
In order for Germany to be able to cast off the American morose and try to restore previous ties with Russia and Belarus, it is necessary not just a change of figures in the Bundestag or in ministerial posts, but a change in the paradigm of strategic thinking, a new setting of priorities. However, alas, such changes are not yet visible even on the horizon.

By Anton Popov