European election: media, headlines and comments. Germany shifting to the right, and Chancellor Scholz is teetering

The day after the election, the German political climate is in a trance: the two main governing parties, the SPD (13.9%) and the Green party (11.9%), have been crushed down (the former by two percent points, the latter by 8.6%), the FPD (Liberal) has hardly moved and is still at 5.2%. The headlines on the papers look outside of the country, with Berlin’s newspaper Tagesspiegel writing, under a photomontage with Le Pen, Von der Leyen and Meloni: “Europe chooses security over climate. Europe’s shift to the right is sad and worrying”. Not least because, with the success of the right-wing parties in Europe, an editorial says, the European Commission will inevitably have to shift to the right too”. What is most surprising - on the national front – is the Germans’ turnout, that, at 64.8%, has been the highest one since the reunification. The website of the weekly Der Spiegel opens with Ursula von der Leyen raising her arms in a sign of victory, with the headline going “She is doing it with her left, doesn’t she?”. The nationwide comments are quite sharp, instead: “The result of the European election proves that the Germans have had enough with this chancellorship”; the options at stake are handing the baton over to the Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius of the SPD, or, even better to the acclaimed leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz. But it seems no decision has been taken yet. The Liberal Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung gives voice to the CSU leader, Markus Söder, who asked for an early election, like France did, after the defeat of the governing parties. Europe-wide, what they say about the “shift to the right”, even on the FAZ headline, is that it “could have consequences on the migration policy. And it could mark the start of a European missile defence programme”. The other piece of news concerns, instead, Germany, where the “green Party has been pulverised because it has lost those it took for granted: young voters”, many of whom seem to have voted for the AFD, which has jumped up to 30%. On the website of the Suddeutsche Zeitung, the photo in the middle shows an election poster with Holaf Scholz’s face being taken off: “the SPD has hardly ever experienced an election night like this, and it has even been surpassed by the AFD, while Scholz is still having fun taking selfies”. And the general comment on the results: “after the European election, Germany is divided. In the old Landers, the Union has won almost everywhere, while the AFD has won in the younger ones. Generally, the EU is moving to the right, and Germany is moving with it”.
Sarah Numico