Merkel may win election, but lose her finance minister

SASBACHWALDEN, Germany: Wolfgang Schaeuble has won his parliamentary seat a dozen times, survived an attempt on his life and guided Angela Merkel through the euro zone crisis.

Now, the German chancellor may have to sacrifice him to secure a coalition deal. Merkel’s conservatives are likely to win a national election on Sept 24, but lack of an overall majority could force them to continue their alliance with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

SPD leaders say their price for a re-run of the current ‘grand coalition’ would be for Schaeuble to vacate the finance ministry and hand it to them.

Schaeuble personifies the fiscal discipline and financial stability that many Germans crave. But for the SPD he goes too far. For Merkel’s political opponents, Schaeuble’s emphasis that both Germany and other EU countries adhere to Europe’s budget rules risks denying French President Emmanuel Macron the flexibility to revive his country’s economy.

Germany is awash with tax revenues but France is in a tighter spot. The SPD worries that insistence on French budget discipline will not give Macron the room for manoeuvre to foster growth. If Macron fails, the SPD’s concern is the EU will fail or that far-right leader Marine Le Pen could win power.

SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he had asked Merkel which scenario in her view would be more expensive for Germany: a slightly higher budget deficit in France or Le Pen as president in five years.

“We Germans must change our position,” Gabriel said. Softening Schaeuble’s approach to the euro zone would not go down well with many Germans. In his home region of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where hard work and saving is a way of life, he enjoys cult status.

In Schaeuble’s view, governments must stop piling up debt so that future policy makers still have some money to spend. In a wheelchair since a deranged man shot him at an election campaign event a few days after German reunification in 1990, Schaeuble lives for the job and has signalled his willingness to stay in politics.

“I’m ready to continue,” he told voters in Sasbachwalden, his home town near the French border. Schaeuble does not let his disability hold him back.  In May, he flew half way around the world to spend 12 hours in Durban, where he attended several panels at the World Economic Forum on Africa, backed efforts to attract more investment and lectured students on how the EU works.