Armin Laschet and Annalena Baerbock at the Munich Security Conference in February 2020
(Photo: AFP)

Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign is ending, and Germany will elect a new government in September. The new chancellor will lead the most influential country in the European Union, manage Germany’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and mediate an increasingly fraught relationship with other Western democracies as Germany finalizes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia.

Still, the election is an encouraging one. Two candidates have a serious shot at winning, and both are defenders of liberal democratic norms. The likely victor, Armin Laschet, represents Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (C.D.U.). His strongest challenger, Annalena Baerbock leads the center-left Greens. Meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany Party (A.f.D.) is polling in fifth at about 10% support, significantly worse than its peak of 17% in 2018.

What to watch for: a Laschet victory or a surprise from Baerbock

A Laschet victory is the most likely outcome (about 70% probability according to the betting markets), and his rule would largely be a continuation of Merkel’s. Like Merkel, he’s a moderate conservative and a strong proponent of the E.U., and supported the 2015 decision to welcome nearly a million Syrian refugees to Germany. Unfortunately, he falls into the C.D.U.'s perpetual folly of believing that Russian money is politically neutral and that it’s possible to line the pockets of Russian kleptocrats (err… “businessmen”) without weakening European security. Laschet would likely take a similar stance toward China; in 2019, he came out firmly in support of allowing Huawei, a Chinese tech company under the influence of the Chinese government, to build critical digital infrastructure across Europe that could enable state-run espionage and cyber attacks. 

Annalena Baerbock of the Greens has long odds (16%, according to the same betting market), but still some of the best in the Greens’ 40-year history. One of the major reasons for their newfound competitiveness? A move towards the center. The Greens have worked hard in recent years to shed their label of being a Verbotspartei (“prohibition party,” in German) made up of hippies and pacifists. Their position on climate change has moderated, and their stance on authoritarian regimes like China and Russia is now hawkish. 

The Greens see authoritarianism as one of the two most significant threats to the West (along with climate change), and think that the best way to protect liberal democracy in Germany is to pursue a policy of “dialogue and toughness” with Putin and Xi. So while a Baerbock government wouldn’t be cutting off trade or diplomatic relations with China and Russia, it would likely scrap the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, step up pressure on Russia for its military buildup near Ukraine, and ban the imports of certain products from China in response to C.C.P. human rights violations in Xinjiang. 

Whatever happens in September, German liberal democracy is likely to fare well. Laschet and Baerbock might differ on foreign policy, but both are ardent supporters of mainstream politics. The success of moderates like Laschet and Baerbock, and the A.f.D.'s failure to build on its surprisingly strong performance in the 2017 Bundestag election, shows that centrism and liberal democracy might be regaining ground in Germany.