German conservatives mired in ‘the swamp’

BERLIN — Contrary to popular myth, Germans can be quite tolerant — at least when it comes to their politicians. 

Angela Merkel — despite public outrage in the moment — was never in serious jeopardy as chancellor as a result of either her government’s hamfisted approach to the eurozone financial implosion a decade ago or the refugee crisis of 2015.

There’s one thing the German demos won’t countenance, however: corruption.

It’s been a while since the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-right party that has dominated Germany’s politics for the past 16 years under Merkel, has been mired in corruption controversy, but it’s now making up for it in spades. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, a wave of scandal is breaking over the party, exposing the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors by politicians (both senior and junior) that often presage a citizen’s revolt at the ballot box. The revelations, which concern both the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have already led to a string of resignations and criminal investigations and, by the looks of it, the storm is only gathering power.  

For now, the Christian Democrats remain ahead in national polls, but support for the conservatives has fallen to 29 percent from 36 percent just since February, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. In some individual polls, the decline is even more dramatic, with the second-place Greens within 5 percentage points.

With the next national election just six months away, the conservatives, who have yet to even choose their standard-bearer for the campaign, are in full panic mode. Germany was already preparing for the end of an era amid Merkel’s planned departure after the election. But with her party, which has governed Germany for most of the postwar period, sinking in scandal, even more dramatic change may be in store.   

“It’s possible to govern Germany without the Christian Democrats in the coalition,” Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ chancellor candidate and Germany’s current finance minister, said after the conservatives stumbled in regional elections this month. “This message has now hit home and everyone understands that.” 

Not least the Christian Democrats themselves. The state elections, held just after the corruption allegations came to light, were a disaster for the CDU.

“We have to fight,” CDU leader Armin Laschet told party colleagues at a closed-door meeting last week. 

The real fight will be to root out what is starting to look like endemic corruption in the conservative bloc. 

Mask money

The trouble began in late February after authorities informed the Bundestag, the German parliament, they were investigating Georg Nüßlein, then deputy leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, for possible corruption.  

Financial regulators in Liechtenstein had detected what they described as a suspicious transaction — a transfer of €660,000 — to an account affiliated with Nüßlein. That money, according to people familiar with the probe, was a commission paid to Nüßlein for helping a German textile manufacturer secure a lucrative contract to sell the Health Ministry surgical masks. 

In other words, Nüßlein stands accused of profiteering, helping to peddle medical protective gear at premium prices in the middle of a pandemic. That’s not exactly the kind of behavior a party that professes to represent the conservative establishment wants to be associated with. Nüßlein has yet to be charged and maintains his innocence.

The Bavarian isn’t the only one facing such allegations, however. 

Just days after police raided Nüßlein’s parliamentary offices, Nikolas Löbel, a CDU man from Mannheim, acknowledged that he had received €250,000 for helping to arrange a government contract for masks for a company in his home state. 

Then last week, police searched the offices of Alfred Sauter, a senior official in the CSU and former Bavarian justice minister, in connection with the mask deals that tripped up Nüßlein. Sauter denies any wrongdoing. 

Sauter, Nüßlein and their partners netted between €5 million and €6 million from the deals, German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, German Health Minister Jens Spahn is facing uncomfortable questions about a mask transaction between his ministry and the magazine publisher where his husband works as a lobbyist.

As if politicians accused of flogging masks to the government at inflated prices in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t bad enough, prosecutors are also investigating at least three other current and former conservative MPs for allegedly accepting thousands in bribes from Azerbaijan. The politicians stand accused of making positive comments about Azerbaijan, including by praising the integrity of elections in the Caucasus nation, in order to help the government there cover up human rights abuses.  

One of those accused, CDU MP Karin Strenz, 53, died Sunday on a flight en route to Germany from Cuba. Authorities haven’t determined the cause of her death, but there were no obvious signs of foul play.  

It will likely be years before Germany’s courts sort through the flurry of recent corruption cases, but the court of public opinion has already determined that the conservatives have violated public trust. 

Déjà vu

To many observers, the conservatives’ travails carry more than a hint of irony. Merkel’s rise in the party came largely as a result of the last big corruption scandal in German politics. In the late 1990s, at the end of the Helmut Kohl era, it emerged that his party had been running a system of secret bank accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere seeded with anonymous “donations.” Exactly what the money was used for was never fully determined. And Kohl took the identity of the CDU’s secret benefactors to his grave. 

Now, just as Merkel prepares to leave the stage, the party faces a fresh scandal that, like the previous one, could blacken its public image and even cost it the next election. 

The conservatives’ history of corruption has been almost forgotten over the past 20 years because, as Der Spiegel recently observed, it has been run by a woman “for whom the greatest temptation was a potato soup from the Uckermark,” a reference to Merkel’s home region. 

To critics, the recent scandals, even if no criminal wrongdoing can be established, confirm that the conservative ruling political class has constructed an opaque system of patronage with dubious outside interests, be they foreign governments or local businesses — Germany’s answer to what Donald Trump famously called “the swamp.”  

While that might be a slight exaggeration, the laxness of the rules governing lobbying and outside earnings for members of parliament make it difficult to know for sure. 

Unlike the U.S., where contacts between members of Congress and lobbyists are meticulously documented and their outside income restricted, German politicians face little official oversight. 

This week, the Bundestag is expected to pass legislation to introduce a “lobby register,” which would require lobbyists to record their interactions with MPs. Yet the new regulations, which the conservatives until recently opposed, won’t require disclosure of what was discussed, be it water quality or the state of German soccer. And a number of organizations, including unions, employer associations and churches, are exempt from the rules altogether. 

Even more surprising to foreign eyes is the lack of limitations on an MP’s outside earnings. Many MPs work as lawyers alongside their public mandates but they aren’t required to forfeit their client list. And while MPs are required to disclose their extra income on the Bundestag’s website, they don’t have to give full details. 

Some rake in sums in the hundreds of thousands of euros. 

It’s not only conservatives who are benefiting either. Christian Lindner, leader of the opposition Free Democrats (FDP), a liberal, pro-business party, earned €424,000 since the last election in 2017, according to abgeordnetenwatch.de, a legislative watchdog group. Most of that money came from speeches Lindner delivered to private businesses, such as Allianz, the German insurance giant. 

Another top earner was Gregor Gysi, a prominent member of the left-wing Die Linke party and a former communist.

As a group, the conservatives and liberals have taken in the most money, and for a simple reason.

“The CDU, CSU and the FDP are the parties of business,” said Maximilian Schiffers, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen who studies lobbying.

Schiffers says that while the proximity of politics and business in Germany isn’t any closer than one finds in many other countries, the rules governing those interactions are generally much laxer. 

One common loophole, for example, involves stock options. Politicians are permitted to accept stock options from companies and face no obligation of public disclosure. The practice has become so common that MPs openly solicit such arrangements in their dealings with lobbyists, according to one industry association that asked not to be named. 

“The laws should require much more transparency and, as the recent scandals have illustrated, the rules for MPs need to be considerably strengthened,” said Timo Lange, an official with LobbyControl, a German group that campaigns for stricter rules. “There needs to be a clear prohibition against paid lobbying for legislators.”  

Nette Nöstlinger contributed to this article.