Severe Defeat for Merkel as German Voters Reject Austerity

By Kate Connolly, Guardian UK

14 May 12

North Rhine-Westphalia re-elects SPD-Greens in bellwether result seen as a rejection of her austerity measures at local level.

oters in Germany's most populous state handed a resounding victory to the centre-lefton Sunday, dealing a heavy blow to Angela Merkel's conservatives in what was interpreted as a backlash against the chancellor's European austerity campaign.

Exit polls on Sunday night in the North Rhine-Westphalia election showed Hannelore Kraft, who had led the state's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) in a coalition with the Greens, had soundly beaten her Christian Democrat (CDU) rival Norbert Röttgen, Merkel's environment minister.

The SPD secured 39% of the vote to the CDU's 26% in what amounted to the worst result in the state for the conservatives since 1949. The Greens took 12%, ensuring that a coalition with the SPD would mean a 10-seat majority in the state parliament. The Free Democratic party (FDP), Merkel's coalition partner in the federal government, took 8.5% of the vote.

The parvenu Pirates party, whose platform is based on greater openness in government through technology, were celebrating their fourth successive entry into a regional parliament after polling 7.5%.

The result in North Rhine-Westphalia is seen as setting the tone for next year's federal elections. The state's 18 million people makes it bigger than some EU countries, including Greece, whose perilous economic situation and Germany's approach to it was often the focus of the campaign. It gives a clear boost to the SPD and puts Merkel, who remains Germany's most popular politician after seven years in power, on shaky political ground.

The setback for the CDU comes on top of the defeat last week of its coalition with the FDP in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. Merkel's position has further been weakened by her ally Nicolas Sarkozy's defeat in the French presidential election as well as the collapse of the Dutch government. She has also been facing increasing allegations, particularly from the SPD, that she is to blame for the surge of neo-Nazis in Greece because of her policy on the eurozone debt crisis.

National polls show that Merkel's pro-austerity approach has popular support in Germany, with 61% saying they approve of her stance. But within North Rhine-Westphalia – which includes the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, and the industrial Ruhr region – it would appear that the CDU's arguments that the state needed to make sacrifices to slash its €180bn (£144bn) debt backfired.

While CDU politicians sought to label the SPD-Green government as irresponsibly profligate, calling it "pro debt", campaigners for the coalition made a point of holding election rallies in disused swimming pools and derelict recreation facilities to emphasise the result of decades of under-investment and neglect in the state, which suffers from high unemployment and declining industry.

During campaigning, local politicians also triggered a heated national debate by calling for an end to the system whereby western states have sent tens of billions in transfer payments to the former communist east, arguing that more than 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was now an unfair burden on them.

In words that will now no doubt haunt him and his party, Röttgen went so far as to argue that the election result was a referendum on Merkel's European debt stance and would decide whether her "course in Europe is strengthened or weakened by the re-election of a pro-debt government in Germany". The remarks provoked much criticism from fellow CDU leaders.

But some opinion pollsters said a rejection of fiscal discipline at home did not mean Germans were likely to change their support for Merkel's insistence on austerity in Europe. One called it "a case of austerity please, but not in my backyard".

Sunday's result comes two days ahead of a meeting between Merkel and France's president-elect, François Hollande, in Berlin to discuss Europe's debt crisis, as French and German officials work behind the scenes to find a deal to reconcile her insistence on fiscal discipline with his desire for growth.