Germany 2025 Election: Can Germans Survive Trump’s Puppet?

Q1: Regarding the 2025 German federal election, what do you think are the most important issues?

The least significant result is that we shall have a new Chancellor: Mr Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, who will receive double the votes of the unpopular current social democratic Chancellor Mr Olaf Scholtz who is destined either to return to government as a much-diminished figure or to retire. Nevertheless, Merz will be forced to form a coalition with Scholtz’s social democrats perhaps with the Greens as well – since it is the only way of keeping out of government the ascending neofascist party of the AfD, the darlings of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

The precise composition of the coalition government will depend on which of three parties tittering on the cutoff of 5% (the minimum necessary to win any seats in parliament) manage to enter Parliament: the free democrats, the old Left party or the party of Sahra Wagechnect – who started life as a leftwinger but is not positioning herself as an out and out xenophobe. Mr Merz would prefer that none of these three parties make the 5% mark. The more of them succeed in entering Parliament the more dependent he will be on the social democrats and the greens to have an absolute majority in Parliament.

Q2: What are the real changes that we should expect to see from this reconfiguration of the governing coalition?

Not many, regardless of the precise. Recall that the Christians and the social democrats ruled together under the Christian democrat Angela Merkel, for a decade a decade. During that decade, the current policies were set in stone. It was the decade that cemented the austerity for the many and the money printing for the few – the combination that crushed investment and led to today’s deindustrialisation.

Will they do better this time around? No chance. They will be more cruel toward migrants and probably relax their idiotic debt rules that starve the state of funding – but only in order to pay for more weaponry, as part of the pointless drive to beef up a military that is never going to be used.

Q3: What should China expect from the 2025 German election?

If Kamala Harris had won in the US, China should expect Merz’s Germany to fall behind America’s strategies, including the demand that Berlin ‘decouples’ from China, agrees with the EU’s ridiculous tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels and so on. However, with Trump blowing up the transatlantic alliance, there is a slight chance that a Merz government will not be happy to cut off the German industry’s lifeline to China just because Washington says so. Then again, our European leaders have proven their cowardice again and again.

While still in Germany, let me give you the terrible news: Germany has become a totalitarian police state.

Police pressure forces venue change for Francesca Albanese Berlin event. Source: DiEM25

This morning the movement that I helped co-found, DiEM25, had organised a meeting to discuss Palestine, featuring a keynote speech by the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, the incredible Francesca Albanese. The police informed the organisers that policemen would be in the audience monitoring every word. Then, before the event started, the police barricaded DiEM25’s venue. Our organisers have found another venue and are calling attendees to make their way to it.

Democracy is just a word in a Germany slipping inexorably into a totalitarian abyss. Sadly, the next election will do nothing to change that.

Editor: Charriot Zhai