Overall, a disappointing night for Angela Merkel’s challenger. Briefly, on Turkey, it felt like he had managed to spring a surprise on the chancellor, but the format and the questions didn’t give him an opportunity to keep up the momentum. Merkel, on the other hand, didn’t shine, but then she didn’t need to. Here is Kate Connolly’s write-up of the evening:
Thanks for following this liveblog and Gute Nacht.
According to the first poll, which was carried out halfway through the debate, 44% of viewers found Merkel more convincing than Schulz, whom only 32% found convincing. That result may change, but the Social Democrat had more momentum on foreign policy in the first half, and looked less coherent on domestic issues in the second. To change the momentum in this election campaign, this certainly wouldn’t be enough.
Poll after half of the #TVDuell : #Schulz seen as more aggressive (not perfect translation), #Merkel as having better arguments. pic.twitter.com/lmS6S7icCU
— Ulrike E Franke (@RikeFranke) September 3, 2017
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The debate is over. Schulz’s finishing message is that we “live in a time of change” and that it was up to Germany’s next chancellor to shape the future, not just manage it. Merkel, similarly, focuses on the challenges of the future, emphasising the digital economy and social cohesion.
Ninety minutes are over, we are on to the finishing statements. If, as German media has reported, Schulz’s team identified pensions, education and disarmament as key areas in which Schulz could have scored points over Merkel, then this has been a disastrous evening for the Social Democrat. Pensions were only mentioned in passing, and there was nothing on education nor, bizarrely, on Nato spending.
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Shortly after this tweet was sent, the candidates were in fact asked whether it was a good idea to hold the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Merkel thought it was “not a particularly good idea”.
Bizarrely populist German TV debate, steered by moderators. Immigration, car toll, football doubtless next. Zero on EU, Nato etc. #TVduell
— J v Reppert-Bismarck (@julianevrb) September 3, 2017
Interviewers now trying to force Schulz and Merkel to answer questions with “yes” or “no”. Merkel simply ignores the new rules for the first three questions, answering with conditional sentences.
Schulz is now trying to attack Merkel and her party for introducing a toll on German motorways. In 2013, Merkel promised there would be no motorway toll under her leadership. But it’s an odd choice of subject to get too worked up about, because it’s hardly the most emotive of issues. And as predicted earlier, Merkel simply shrugs her shoulders and points out that the Social Democrats voted for the toll, too. Schulz is getting a bit too technical on domestic issues; you can tell he has spent the last few months catching up on policy issues and is now trying to show off how much he has learnt.
The Economist’s Berlin correspondent is not impressed:
Germany is Europe's core country, perhaps the lynchpin of the democratic West. Yet its prospective leaders are bickering over road-tolls.
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) September 3, 2017
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Worth noting: we’ve now moved on from foreign policy, and this is how many times Brexit has been mentioned: null.
On Trump, Schulz’s bluster comes to very little. Merkel just has to cite the list of people she is due to talk with over the phone tomorrow and she immediately comes across as the grown-up in the room.
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First questions on Donald Trump. Schulz says the US president is too unpredictable. “We need to focus on our more predictable partners”. Merkel says she will do everything to make sure that there will be a diplomatic solution to the conflict with North Korea, not a military one. “I will do everything to convince the American president that we need a peaceful situation”.
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Schulz has found his groove on Turkey and Merkel isn’t happy. It wouldn’t be right to call of all diplomatic relations with a country only because an election campaign is dictating one-upmanship. “If German citizens can be freed, you have to talk”
Schulz says, under him, Germany would be clearer in stating its positions at the European council. “You may not get a majority, but you have to present your case”. Schulz again brings up his promise to cancel the accession talks with Turkey, citing recent arrests of German citizens there.
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The first 45 minutes of this debate have now been taken up by refugees, Islam and Turkey. On Twitter, a lot of German commentators are suggesting it may be time to move on to other issues. Jakob Augstein, a columnist for Der Spiegel, says: “This evening shows what kind of role the AfD now play in German politics”
Dieser Abend zeigt, welche Rolle die AfD inzwischen in der deutschen Politik spielt. #tvduell
— Jakob Augstein (@Augstein) September 3, 2017
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Schulz says the EU’s external borders “can’t and shouldn’t be closed”.
The editor-in-chief of influential tabloid Bild thinks that Schulz is performing well, solely because he is forcing Merkel to engage with the issues he cares about. “Merkel has engaged more often with Martin Schulz tonight than over the course of the entire campaign”, tweets Julian Reichelt. “Point for him”
Merkel ist schon häufiger auf @MartinSchulz eingegangen als im ganzen bisherigen Wahlkampf. Punkt für ihn.
— Julian Reichelt (@jreichelt) September 3, 2017
In interviews over the past few weeks, the chancellor has barely mentioned Schulz’s name: in German, they call it totschweigen, hushing someone to death. She was picked up on this at her annual summer press conference last week. “I have especially gone out of my way to mention Martin Schulz today already, so you can’t accuse me of hushing him up”, she had responded.
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Schulz getting more confident now. He promises to cancel Turkey’s accession talks with the EU if he gets elected as chancellor. “This country cannot become a member of the European Union”, he says
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Schulz quotes Rumi: “Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.” It didn’t add up to much of a point, but it sounded nice.
Merkel is asked how she will convince the public that Islam is compatible with German culture. Merkel says that Islam is compatible with Germany, but only as long as it conforms with the German constitution. Feels like a very scripted answer. The more of this debate is taken up by debating the refugee crisis, the worse for her.
Is the refugee crisis a challenge for our generation, that of our children, or even that of our grandchildren, ask the moderators. Schulz jokes about the interviewer’s age and says it is a challenge for this generation. He is a bit too keen to get his answers in on this, and ends up letting Merkel off the hook.
“It may have been a dramatic situation, but why didn’t you close the borders again afterwards,” asks interviewer Claus Strunz. Merkel asks what the alternatives were: using water cannon against refugees? She defends the controversial EU-Turkey refugee deal. “I still think it was the right solution”.
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The pace of the debate is very hectic – a result, it feels, of the four interviewers all trying to get their questions in. Merkel comes across as more calm, Schulz is trying to be more aggressive but hasn’t landed a punch yet.
Merkel is asked whether she takes responsibility for the fact that for the first time in postwar history, a party to the right of her party will enter parliament. Does she take responsibility for the rise of the AfD? Merkel deflects the questions, says she made “the right decision in a dramatic situation”. Schulz criticises Merkel for her actions during the refugee crisis – not for keeping open borders, but for failing to consult other European states. “I see that differently”, replies Merkel. “Hungary was not prepared to show solidarity”, she says.
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First question is addressed at Schulz: can he explain why his ratings have collapsed after a month of hype? A slightly mumbled answer, in which he blames a string of poor local elections
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We are off. Merkel wearing a blue blazer, Schulz a counter-intuitive blue tie.
Is the debate over before it has started? That’s what you would have been led to believe if you typed “Merkel Schulz TV duel” into German Google on Sunday morning: the top item that came up read “Merkel loses – Schulz clear winner”, a sponsored link, taking you to the SPD homepage.
A young CDU politician spotted the faux pas: “Our humble socialists: Schulz already clear winner, that’s what I call ‘respect’”, a reference to one of the key terms of the SPD’s campaign.
Unsere bescheidenen #Sozis: #Schulz steht schon als Sieger fest, das nenne ich mal "Respekt". #spd #schulz pic.twitter.com/MCoNKMCah9
— Jan Günther (@Jans_world_twit) September 3, 2017
Soon after, the SPD apologised: “Service provider made an embarrassing mistake on Google overnight. Not our style. We apologise for the confusion”
Dienstleister ist heute Nacht bei Google peinlicher Fehler unterlaufen. Nicht unser Stil. Verwirrung bitten wir zu entschuldigen.
— SPD Parteivorstand (@spdde) September 3, 2017
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What about Brexit, some of you may ask. Surely this will be a key talking point on the campaign trail and in tonight’s debate? David Davis seems to think so, stating last week that the outcome of the German elections would “accelerate” the Brexit process.
David Davis: "The outcome of the german election will be to accelerate the [Brexit] process once it's happened."
— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) September 1, 2017
Well, not quite. Christian Odendahl and Sophia Besch of the Centre for European Reform think tank have written a useful Q&A just on this issue. The key passage:
Contrary to what readers of the UK news media may believe, Brexit hardly features in the German election campaign. If it comes up at all, it is usually mentioned in the same breath as the election of President Donald Trump, as an example of triumphant right-wing populism. Most German voters still have a very hard time understanding why British voters decided the leave the EU.
Schulz is in a difficult position. The pressure is on him to go on the attack, but he has to place his punches with real precision or they can be made to look like an assault on his own party. Merkel has governed in coalition with the Social Democrats for eight out of her 12 years in power, so there are few of her policies Schulz can properly criticise without her shrugging and pointing out that his party colleagues had one hand on the wheel at the time.
Schulz’s advisers have reportedly identified three areas in which he can properly let rip: pensions, education and disarmament. For the first two, the SPD politician has drawn up entirely new reform plans, fighting old-age poverty by boosting pensions with tax money for the former, and more centralised education standards for the latter. The third area has the most populist potential, though even some SPD staffers admit that a disarmament campaign is a sign of how much the Social Democrats struggle to distance themselves from Merkel on any other subject.
Schulz has in recent weeks repeatedly attacked Merkel for planning to spend an additional €30bn on the armed forces, vowing to oppose the 2% Nato spending target which the Social Democrat candidate says is being forced on his country by Donald Trump, the US president. “Merkel wants to spend money on more weapons – we’ll spend the money on you” is now at the core of the SPD’s doorstep strategy. Expect him to go big on this tonight.
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If the SPD believes that tonight’s debate could present their last chance to swing the momentum back in Schulz’s favour, it’s because they know public debating is not Merkel’s forte, whereas their candidate is a gifted orator. In 2005, Merkel had been leading in the polls until the format gave incumbent chancellor Gerhard Schröder a platform to take a swing at her proposals for reforming the German tax system. Then, 54% of viewers thought the Social Democrat had won the debate and, in the end, Merkel even came closing to losing her grip on an election that was hers for the taking. That year set a pattern: after each of the three TV debates in Merkel’s career she came out second best in the snap approval polls straight straight after. However – and this is where it all looks a bit futile for Schulz – after each of the debates Merkel then also went on to win the election.
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Merkel and Schulz have already arrived at the TV studio in Adlershof, a district of Berlin that used to lie in the old eastern part of the city. For Merkel, it is a kind of home game: from 1978 until the fall of the Berlin Wall, she worked as a researcher at the Central Institute of Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Science down the road.
Supporters of both Merkel’s CDU and Schulz’s SPD have been gathering outside the venue and are engaging in some “competitive singing”, according to Der Spiegel’s Florian Gathmann:
Anhänger von Schulz und Merkel stehen sich in Adlershof schon gegenüber und singen um die Wette #TVDuell pic.twitter.com/P6Qt4zUe7h
— Florian Gathmann (@FlorianGathmann) September 3, 2017
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Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Fernsehduell – the live debate that pits the two leading candidates in Germany’s federal election against each other for an hour and a half of hopefully lively debate.
Could tonight be the night when an insipid German election campaign finally gets a bit more lively? Only a few months ago people were talking about the vote on 24 September as another potential game-changer. Surely, they said, an election in Europe’s biggest economy would be another dramatic blockbuster after the shock upsets in Britain and America and the nail-biters in Austria and France. Surely, they said, there would be some sort of backlash against Merkel’s decision to keep open borders during the refugee crisis. Surely Merkel could not run a campaign as void of policy and polemics as she did in 2013.
And yet here we are: three weeks to go until Germany goes to the polls, and Merkel has a comfortable double-digit lead over her main challenger, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, who must be asking himself why everyone got briefly excited after his candidacy was revealed in February. Merkel’s campaign slogan is Ein Deutschland, in dem wir gut und gerne leben, which roughly translates as “A Germany in which we live well and gladly”. If America is re-enacting the turmoil of the Weimar Republic, then Germany is revisiting the Biedermeier period.
Tonight’s format is almost a reversal of the TV debate before the British elections in May this year, where one moderator quizzed a Theresa May-less line-up of six candidates. In Berlin, there will be only two candidates and a team of four interviewers, representing the four biggest TV stations.
The debate starts at 18:15 GMT.
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