Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Im Kanzleramt kommt es zu einem überraschenden Einschnitt. Friedrich Merz trennt sich von seinem langjährigen Büroleiter Jacob Schrot. Der Schritt wirft Fragen auf, weil er nicht nur etwas über die Personalie selbst sagt, sondern auch über die Lage des Kanzlers. Nach einem Jahr als außenpolitisch präsenter Regierungschef steht Merz unter wachsendem Druck, innenpolitisch und wirtschaftlich zu liefern. Rixa Fürsen und Rasmus Buchsteiner ordnen ein, warum der Abschied auch mit einem fehlenden Wirtschaftsprofil zu tun hat und welche Erwartungen nun mit dem neuen Büroleiter Philipp Birkenmaier verbunden sind. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview erklärt Vanessa Zobel (CDU) aus dem Wirtschaftsausschuss des Bundestags und Mitglied im Parlamentskreis Mittelstand, warum der Mittelstand schnelle Signale braucht, weshalb Reformen Zeit brauchen und wo sie trotz schwacher Wachstumszahlen erste Anzeichen für Bewegung sieht. Außenpolitisch bleibt der Kanzler trotzdem gefordert. In Paris beginnt der erste Ukraine-Gipfel des Jahres. Hans von der Burchard gibt die wichtigsten Infos zum Treffen vorab. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski. POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0 information@axelspringer.de Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390 Geschäftsführer: Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Ein Gespräch zwischen Beton, Brücke und Bundeskanzleramt: Gordon Repinski trifft Jens Spahn zum Spaziergang durch das Berliner Regierungsviertel und spricht mit dem Unions-Fraktionschef über das Koalitionsklima, den Kanzler und wie sich Deutschland in einer Moll-Stimmung befindet. Spahn erklärt, warum der „linke Empörungszirkus“ über die Stadtbilddebatte für ihn Symbol ist, wie Union und SPD gemeinsam das Land stabilisieren sollen und weshalb für ihn „Mitte rechts“ nicht dasselbe ist wie „rechts der Mitte“. Er spricht über Migration, Rentenpolitik, Wirtschaftswachstum – und darüber, warum das Land wieder Zuversicht braucht. Es geht zu dem um Spahns Verhältnis zu Friedrich Merz, den inneren Frieden mit alten Ambitionen, seine Sicht auf die AfD und seine Haltung zu Trump und den Republikanern. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

PARIS — French politics are so paralyzed that the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron — an idea once only whispered in the corridors of power — is now being openly debated. But while Macron’s departure would be an earthquake on the European diplomatic stage, there’s increasing doubt it would fix the gridlock stalling the Fifth Republic. France’s problems appear to be deeper. Macron is already scouting around for his fifth prime minister in less than two years, in the expectation that François Bayrou will be ousted on Monday over his unpopular measures to slash the country’s eye-watering budget deficit. But would a new prime ministerial nominee from Macron be able to force through the billions of euros in budget tightening that the country needs to avoid a debt crisis? And would a new snap election create a workable majority? Neither outcome seems likely. And even if Macron were to resign, his successor would almost certainly face the same obstacles. For nearly 70 years, the institutions of the French Fifth Republic have held, no matter how often people took to the streets or how long they went on strike. Governments came and went as presidents, for the most part, lasted until the end of their terms, albeit usually less popular than when they began. The system endured. But today the legislature is deadlocked, budget talks are flatlining, and murmurs of social unrest are growing louder. Financial markets are jumpy, and Bayrou himself is warning that Paris faces a Greek-style scenario unless it reins in spending. Against that backdrop, far-right National Rally President Jordan Bardella and far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose parties together account for a third of seats in the National Assembly, are openly calling for the president to go. The broader conversation about his departure is no longer outlandish and now includes reputable political commentators and some figures from the center right. “We’re hearing this even from voices close to the Macron camp,” said Mathieu Gallard, a pollster at Ipsos France. “The discomfort is real.” HANGING IN THERE Macron is still seen as extremely unlikely to throw in the towel, not least because his premature exit — a presidential election isn’t due until 2027 — would do nothing to resolve the mess. Surveys show a new legislative election in the coming weeks would most likely yield another hung parliament with a few more seats for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Emmanuel Macron is already scouting around for his fifth prime minister in less than two years, in the expectation that François Bayrou will be ousted on Monday over his unpopular measures to slash the country’s eye-watering budget deficit. | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA “Politicians wrongly believe the myth that the French choose a leader, and then hand him a working parliamentary majority to act,” said French constitutional expert Benjamin Morel. That idea, Morel said, was a another casualty of Macron’s 2017 victory as a liberal disruptor who laid waste to France’s bipartisan tradition. The political fault lines that emerged from the rubble have, in a cruel twist of fate, come back to haunt him. “I haven’t seen this much uncertainty since I was a student in 1968,” said Eric Chaney, former chief economist of the AXA insurance firm, referring to May 1968 protests that brought France to a standstill and led to deep social and political changes. “Suddenly, you don’t know what is happening to your own economy, your own government,” Chaney said. NEW LEADER, SAME PROBLEMS Known to be headstrong, Macron has often waved off the possibility of an early departure. The 47-year-old centrist has been a dominant and increasingly polarizing force in French politics for the past eight years, while his promises to forge the country into “the start-up nation” haven’t quite been fulfilled. The president knows full well there is scant sign that French politicians are prepared to put aside their divisions and resolve the budget malaise for the good of the nation. Indeed, the mood in France is downright uncooperative, said Gaspard Gantzer, a former adviser to Socialist French President François Hollande. “We’ll carry on deepening the deficit, nothing will happen and the situation will just get worse,” he said. But French opposition parties would be wrong to think they can cycle through new prime ministers, fresh elections and even an early presidential election without swallowing the bitter medicine that Macron’s successive governments have tried to administer, Chaney said. “If people start thinking it’s not so bad, we can live with deficits, we are heading toward a full-blown crisis,” he said. “Germany will start thinking that France is a serious problem and the ECB [European Central Bank] will not be able to help the French government manage its debt.” Germany, Chaney says, could set conditions on any help the ECB gives France. But even if Berlin were able to strong-arm the French political establishment, would France follow suit? If the Yellow Vest protests of 2018 and 2019, the pensions protests of 2023 and the current calls for a national shutdown are anything to go by, an increasingly skeptical and restive public has little appetite for sacrifices and austerity. As for getting rid of Macron, France is a country steeped in regicidal revolutionary history and understands both the attractions and pitfalls of giving the boss the chop. It’s easy to call for his head — but you’ve got to be ready for the chaos that comes next.

The European Union’s economy would have looked far weaker after the pandemic without foreign workers, European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said Saturday, warning policymakers not to ignore migration’s role even as it fuels political tensions. Speaking at the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Wyoming, Lagarde said an influx of foreign labor helped the eurozone absorb successive shocks like soaring energy costs and record inflation, while keeping growth and jobs intact. Employment in the bloc expanded by 4.1 percent between late 2021 and mid-2025, nearly matching gains in gross domestic product (GDP), she noted. “Although they represented only around 9 percent of the total labor force in 2022, foreign workers have accounted for half of its growth over the past three years,” Lagarde told the gathering of central bankers. Without that contribution, she added, “labor market conditions could be tighter and output lower.” Lagarde singled out Germany and Spain as examples. Germany’s GDP would be about 6 percent lower today without migrant labor, while Spain’s strong recovery also “owes much” to foreign workers, she said. Across the eurozone, employment has expanded by more than 4 percent since 2021, even as central bankers pushed through the steepest rate hikes in a generation. The ECB president argued that migration has played a crucial role in offsetting Europe’s shrinking birth rate and growing appetite for shorter working hours. That, she said, helped companies expand output and damped inflationary pressures even as wages lagged behind prices. But Lagarde also acknowledged the politics. Net immigration pushed the EU’s population to a record 450 million last year, even as governments from Berlin to Rome move to restrict new arrivals under pressure from voters flocking to far-right parties. “Migration could, in principle, play a crucial role in easing labor shortages as native populations age,” Lagarde said. “But political economy pressures may increasingly limit inflows.” She stressed that Europe’s labor market has emerged from recent shocks in “unexpectedly good shape.” But she cautioned against assuming that dynamic will last: demographic decline, political backlash and shifting worker preferences still threaten the eurozone’s resilience.

The White House has warned other countries not to hit back at President Donald Trump’s dramatic new tariffs. But many of the United States’ biggest trading partners aren’t listening. World leaders were still processing Trump’s complex new tariff regime Thursday and few were prepared to unveil specific trade retaliation. But a number of them promised it was coming, raising the specter of an escalating tit-for-tat trade war that could devastate the global economy. “We are already finalizing the first package of countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel, and we are now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters early Thursday morning in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where she was attending a summit. The E.U. was among the dozens of countries that will face a higher “reciprocal” tariff starting on April 9, beyond the 10 percent flat tariff the White House said will apply to all imports entering the U.S. starting April 5. Trump is adding a 20 percent tariff to all EU imports, the White House revealed Wednesday. The rates were even higher for Asian trading partners: 34 percent on China, 26 percent on India, 25 percent on South Korea and 24 percent on Japan. Speaking on Fox News Wednesday night, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had the following advice for countries hit by the tariffs: “Do not retaliate. Sit back. Take it in. Because if you retaliate, there will be escalation. If you don’t retaliate, this is the high water mark.” China, the world’s second largest economy, still vowed to take countermeasures to combat the tariffs, although the government’s statement was vague on what they would be. “This gravely violates WTO rules, and undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun. “China firmly rejects this and will do what is necessary to defend our legitimate rights and interests.” Vietnam, which was hit with a 46 percent tariff, set up a “rapid response team” to gather stakeholder input on how to respond. But other countries seemed to take Bessent’s advice to heart. The United Kingdom, which received the lowest tariff rate of 10 percent, is choosing not to pursue reciprocal tariffs citing Prime Minister Keir Starmer ongoing negotiations with the White House on an economic and tech partnership. Japan, another top trading partner, expressed disappointment with the tariffs but said it would push for an exemption from them. Mexico and Canada were largely spared from Trump’s tariffs rolled out on Wednesday — the White House said they would remain under a 25 percent tariff for all goods that do not comply with USMCA, a Trump negotiated North American trade agreement. In a press conference Thursday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum credited that decision to her relationship with Trump — her response to previous rounds of U.S. tariffs this year has been muted, holding her fire until Trump paused or lowered them. While Sheinbaum said she plans to unveil an “economic package,” she will also continue to negotiate with the White House. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in contrast, objected to the existing 25 percent tariff, which Trump levied last month, and new auto tariffs that went into effect. Carney announced Thursday morning at a press conference in Ottawa that Canada would impose a 25 percent tariff on all automobiles imported from the U.S. “This is a tragedy. It is also the new reality. We must respond with both purpose and force. We are a free, sovereign and ambitious country,” said Carney, who faces parliamentary elections later this month.

Germany will elect a new parliament on Sunday, at a precarious moment for the West.  The vote is almost certain to deliver a change in Berlin, with center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz set to be ejected from office and replaced by the conservative Friedrich Merz, whose CDU/CSU  is on around 30 percent in polls, once coalition talks are done.    But one key question will be how much support the second-placed Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) attracts, with its far-right policy mix including the mass deportation of migrants. The party has won the backing of Donald Trump’s most influential adviser, Elon Musk, while U.S. Vice President JD Vance has demanded mainstream politicians ditch their convention of uniting to keep the far right out of power.  The rise of the AfD over the past decade — to around 20 percent in polls now — has triggered deep soul-searching in the political establishment in a country still wracked with guilt over its Nazi past. Could German history repeat itself?  POLITICO spoke to three leading historians to hear their analysis of what the election means, and what sort of threat the AfD poses to stability in the European Union’s most dependable and economically significant member.  These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.  IS GERMANY HEADING BACK TO THE 1930S?  Timothy Garton Ash, author and Professor of European studies, Oxford University: What we see in the opinion polls is already shocking. One in five voters according to the current opinion polls favor a party which really is hard right, calling for “remigration” — kicking out people of migrant background who may already be citizens; is calling not only to finish with the euro and restore the deutschmark but for Germany to leave the EU. That’s extraordinary. I don’t think it should be underestimated at all.  Katja Hoyer, German-British historian and author of “Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990”: In terms of comparisons to the far right in the 1920s and ’30s, people overestimate the danger to democracy. Germany is acutely aware of its own history and looks back immediately to the ultimate catastrophe of the 1930s as the reference point. But the difference is that the Nazis operated in a climate of mass political violence that came out of the First World War and that just doesn’t exist today. There is no SA, no SS. The other political parties haven’t got their own military wings. Even the Social Democratic Party (SPD) had a military wing in the 1930s.  In terms of the AfD’s capacity or even willingness to dismantle democracy, they are not outright setting out to do that in the way that the Nazis did. The same applies to voters. There’s not a resentment of democracy itself that’s behind the AfD vote, whilst that was definitely the case back in the past.  CAN THE AFD WIN POWER?  Timothy Garton Ash: I do think there’s a real danger for 2029 if you have a so-called grand coalition, Christian and Social Democrats once again, i.e. pretty much the mainstream center and they don’t deliver significant change. There is a really major crisis of the German political economy, of the German political model and the discontents are incredibly widespread.  Katja Hoyer: With Germany’s coalition system as it stands, they [the AfD] would always have to work with somebody to get majorities in parliament to get anything passed. So even in the medium and long term, their extremism would always be tempered in some shape or form.  The CDU [conservative Christian Democrats] have also shown they are quite happy to accept AfD votes on an ad hoc basis. That gives them quite a strong negotiating platform to say to the SPD, as the most likely coalition partner, if they want to do something the SPD is unhappy with they can potentially still go ahead and do it with the AfD.  An election campaign billboard that shows Alice Weidel, chancellor candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), stands vandalized on February 19, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images James Hawes, bestselling author of “The Shortest History of Germany”: That phrase “second-biggest party” sets alarm bells off to an Anglo-Saxon who knows a two-party or three-party system. Of course, it’s nothing of the sort in Germany. In a sense it doesn’t really matter which of the big three or four parties one votes for because they share an overarching commitment to what we would call, in this age of Trump, really important core values. And they can all work together and do work together at every level to protect those or work within them. Although there are different offers, really German politics has an enormous great center.  WHY IS THE AFD SO POPULAR?  Katja Hoyer: If you look at the Cold War era in West Germany, there were basically two options on the table: You could either vote for the conservative program under the CDU which was really very conservative on a lot of issues, or you could vote for reform and modernization under the SPD. They would each only work with one small party as an add-on, usually the liberals.  So you had a clear choice at every election: Do you want things to stay the same or do you want them to get modernized? What’s happening now is even under Angela Merkel you had those two main parties working together, that choice wasn’t there anymore, and people think whatever you did on the ballot paper was the same center-left going forward.  That’s why the AfD is called the “alternative” for Germany — because they’re presenting themselves as the only opposition. When people aren’t happy with the status quo and they’ve got nowhere to go, you’ll see the AfD grow.  James Hawes:  The AfD draws its support distinctly from one particular part of the country, the East. It really isn’t spectacularly spreading in the West. I don’t think there’s any more danger of it doing so than there is of New York adopting Utah gun laws, because there’s this cultural difference between East and West Germany.  Any democracy that can’t cope with a kind of splinter group of around 20 percent can’t really call itself democracy. We have to be able to cope with that. Really, West Germany doesn’t have to worry too much about the AfD. Even if every East German state government went to the AfD, so what?  Timothy Garton Ash: I have absolutely no doubt that the AfD is at 20-21 percent partly because they have this articulate professional woman [Alice Weidel] as the lead candidate, who can have a chat with Elon Musk on X.  The fact that she presents well like that and she is genuinely articulate and speaks a rather sophisticated, university-educated German, and is in command of the economic figures, together with the support of the world’s richest man; plus the fact that the sister party, the Freedom Party in Austria, is now being asked to form a government; plus the fact that hard-right parties are doing well all over Europe — all of that makes people feel it’s OK to vote for them.  HOW IMPORTANT IS AFD LEADER ALICE WEIDEL?  Katja Hoyer: This is what makes her dangerous I think: She’s able to project the more moderate side of the AfD well beyond Germany’s borders because she speaks English quite well, so she’s able to talk to Elon Musk or do her own thing on the international stage.  But she’s also in a minority within her own party despite being a leader. She tried to take the “remigration” term out of her manifesto because she considered it to be too extreme and it makes it basically impossible for them to have a coalition with the conservatives, and she was outnumbered and outvoted at the party conference and they put it back in.  And the same is true for other things like the definition of family as mother, father and child, which was in the manifesto. She took it out and they put it back in, despite her own situation not meeting that definition [she is in a same-sex relationship]. So it’s an odd thing in that you have a comparatively moderate leader leading a party that’s far more radical than she is but she’s willing to go along with it as well.  Election campaign placards, including of the Volt party and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), hang from lampposts on February 17, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images She knows what she has to say and do in order to stay in power and that I think is quite dangerous. If you look in history there’s plenty of examples like it where ideological flexibility makes some of the most extreme leaders in the end.  Timothy Garton Ash: If we say she’s untypical, untypical perhaps in her personal story but not in her political views. She has now in her campaign speech endorsed the idea of remigration, that is a position that until now has really been identified with the often Islamophobic hard right. It’s a really radical position.  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?  Katja Hoyer: I don’t think most voters, even AfD voters, are as radical as the AfD is. They don’t really want a pure AfD program implemented because that is too extreme for most people. So if there is a way forward, the mainstream parties can do some of the things on immigration and also the economy that people want and there’s a sense that things are really moving forward, I also think that would take the wind out of the AfD’s sails.  The problem is if we have quite an unstable situation where nothing much gets done because the new coalition parties can’t agree on anything. If that’s the case, then voters will get more frustrated. And if the AfD doesn’t get so divided that they become dysfunctional, really they just need to hold out and wait for more people to come their way. So I can see a kind of Austrian scenario coming up if nothing changes.  James Hawes: I think the AfD is very close to the limit of where it’s going to get any more votes from. I just don’t see where they’re going to come from, especially given the CDU’s and CSU’s current noises on the big topic of migration. I do not see sufficient Germans wanting to take that sort of risk at all.  Timothy Garton Ash: Between now and [the next expected election in 2029], a whole bunch of external factors could change the situation. But thinking about Europe, thinking about what mainstream parties have to do to get our economies going again, to give people a sense that irregular migration is under control, make people feel secure in terms of doing our own defense if Donald Trump isn’t going to do it for us, I think centrist parties should say to themselves, “Hey guys, we’re drinking in the last chance saloon.”  I can’t think of any time in the last 50 years when the forces of integration and disintegration in Europe have been so finely balanced. It really is unclear which is going to prevail in the next four or five years. 

Rachel Reeves’ first budget wont achieve her aim for the U.K. to have the best economic growth in the G7, the boss of the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies said.  Speaking at a budget debrief event today, the think tank’s chair Paul Johnson said the chancellor got a “hospital pass” from the last government, but her high-tax, high-spend and big-borrowing budget has little in it to boost growth over this parliament.  “Set against the ambition to achieve the fastest economic growth of the G7 this parliament, there was little in the budget itself [to achieve this],” he said. “What we didn’t see in this budget is anything to increase growth in this parliament.”  Reeves hiked taxes by £40 billion in her maiden budget Wednesday and borrowed billions to ramp up spending on struggling government departments. Spending will grow in real terms by 4.8 per cent this year, 3.1 per cent next year, and only by an average of 1.3 per cent between 2025-26 and 2029-30. But the Office for Budget Responsibility, the U.K.’s spending watchdog, expects growth to remain anemic over the next five years, with projections at 2 percent or below every year until 2029. Johnson said he would bet a “substantial sum” that the chancellor will need to boost day-to-day public spending after next year — and that means finding more revenue.  “I am willing to bet a substantial sum that day-to-day public service spending will in fact increase more quickly than supposedly planned after next year. It would be odd to increase spending rapidly only to start cutting back again in subsequent years,” he said. “This is not going to feel like Christmas has come for the public realm.”

LONDON — The U.K.’s growth forecast got an upgrade Tuesday as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) handed some rare good news to Chancellor Rachel Reeves a week out from her first government-wide budget. In its latest world economic outlook and financial stability report, the IMF revised Britain’s GDP growth to 1.1 percent this year — up from 0.7 percent in its July projection. The revised 2024 growth forecast puts the U.K. ahead of Germany, Italy and Japan, and equal with France. Predicted GDP growth for 2025 is unchanged at 1.5 percent. “Growth is projected to have accelerated to 1.1 percent in 2024 and is expected to continue doing so to 1.5 percent in 2025 as falling inflation and interest rates stimulate domestic demand,” the IMF said in its report.  The IMF’s report echoes a forecast from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s, which in September revised Britain’s GDP growth for 2024 to 1.1 percent, up from 0.4 percent in its previous May projection. However, the latest U.K. growth projections are still far below global output, which the IMF predicts will hold steady at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 2025. The new IMF figures come a week after better-than-expected inflation figures for the U.K. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data put the U.K.’s rate of inflation at 1.7 percent on an annual basis to September, down from 2.2 percent the month before.  Both metrics are a boost to U.K. Chancellor Reeves, who will unveil her first budget in just over a week’s time on Oct. 30, and who has pledged to ensure the U.K. has the highest sustained growth in the G7 by the end of this parliament. However, official U.K. public sector borrowing figures for September show the scale of the challenge facing the country’s new finance minister, who has accused the previous Conservative administration of leaving a “black hole” in U.K. tax-and-spend plans. According to figures published Tuesday by the ONS, the government borrowed £16.6 billion last month. That’s the highest amount since the Covid-19 pandemic and above the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March forecast. Public sector pay rises and debt interest payments were the biggest drivers, the ONS said on Tuesday morning. “It’s welcome that the IMF have upgraded our growth forecast for this year, but I know there is more work to do,” Reeves said in a statement. “That is why the budget next week will be about fixing the foundations to deliver change, so we can protect working people, fix the NHS and rebuild Britain.”