Olaf Scholz will be sworn in as Germany's ninth chancellor since World War II on Wednesday, ending Angela Merkel's 16 year tenure and inheriting a worsening Pandemic crisis and a raft of geopolitical challenges, including the standoff over Ukraine.
None of the world s Relentless Demand for Chips in Malaysia turns dead in a matter of seconds.
No Sand and Soldiers Mix as Troops Move In to Protect Cancun Tourists, Neither Sand and Soldiers Mix.
None Even in the Metaverse, Not All Identities Are Created Equal
None of the $300 billion plan to bring green power to China s megacities is a success.
None of the New Climate Refugees in Town: Coyotes
The 63-year-old Social Democrat, Merkel's vice chancellor for the past four years, represents renewal at the top but not too much. Voters who gave him a narrow victory in the Sept. 26 election saw much of what they liked in Merkel a steady hand and competent, if not charismatic, leadership.
He will take over after Germany asserted itself as the supreme power broker in the European Union and a central player as the post-war global order begins to show cracks. Scholz will have to learn how to apply Germany's leverage against threats to Europe's eastern frontier and the ascendancy of China as a superpower.
He ll have to deal with mounting pressure from the U.S. over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russia with Germany's north coast. According to documents seen by Bloomberg and people familiar with the plans, the U.S. will push Germany to abandon the almost-completed project if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine.
Marcel Fratzscher, president of Germany's DIW economic research institute, said on Wednesday that Russia has the ability to blackmail Germany and Europe. This pipeline will not take off, because my hunch is that it will be blocked permanently. Scholz has already shown domestic political prowess, deftly assembling a government with two other parties with very different policies - the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. The three-way coalition, which holds 416 of the 736 seats of the Bundestag, was forged more quickly and seamlessly than most political observers in Berlin expected.
The 177-sided coalition accord has the finger prints of each party. The Greens brought the country s coal-exit date forward to 2030, and the SPD secured a minimum wage increase to 12 euros $13.50 an hour and pension guarantees, and the FDP won out on a promise not to raise taxes and preserve constitutional debt limits.
Political fights are baked in. The Greens pledge to push Germany to the forefront of the battle against climate change, with billions of dollars invested in renewable resources on the path to carbon neutrality by 2045. The FDP has assured its base that it will keep spending and debt in check.
Christian Lindner, the FDP chairman who will be Scholz's finance minister, has already sounded a warning on Tuesday, saying that the government is watching inflation or monetary devaluation very closely and will factor it into fiscal decisions.
Robert Habeck, the Green vice chancellor who oversees climate policy, said his party will stick to the ambitious pledges that were secured in the accord.
The pandemic is on the table and foremost will be tackling it. In Germany, there has been an unprecedented surge in infections in the past few weeks, which has lagged western European peers in vaccination rates.
Scholz wants to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed by Covid patients by requiring a national effort to administer 30 million shots by the end of the year. He has backed a vaccine mandate that is expected to go to a vote in the lower house of parliament by the end of the year.
Scholz brushed past setbacks to become labor minister in Merkel's first grand coalition with the SPD, a one-time SPD activist and lawyer who became a staunch defender of labor-market overhaul under Gerhard Schroeder. He went to his hometown of Hamburg and governed the city from 2011 to 2018 after winning a state election.
He is now based in Potsdam outside Berlin, where he won a seat for the Bundestag this year. His wife, Britta Ernst, is the education minister for the eastern state of Brandenburg.
Scholz, who many people in Germany had written off as recently as the summer, staged a surprise comeback victory in the September vote. His direct opponents, CDU Chairman Armin Laschet and Greens Co-leader Annalena Baerbock, stumbled in their bid to win over voters.
The new government coalition, a formation never tried at the federal level, will have Germany's first cabinet staffed by women, excluding the chancellor himself, Baerbock will be the first female foreign minister, while the SPD s Christine Lambrecht will be defense minister. Nancy Faeser, a SPD leader from the western state of Hesse, will take over the interior ministry - another first.
Christine Lagarde, the European Central Bank president, said she is certain that Scholz and his government will continue to work hard to advance European integration. "I have always admired how Angela Merkel steered Germany through many crises," Lagarde was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the Handelsblatt newspaper. I am sure that Olaf Scholz will work just as calmly, thoroughly, and in a focused way on the huge tasks that he and his government have before them. None From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out None The Fall of a Russian Cyberexecutive Who Went Against the Kremlin