SHAPE-SHIFTING SCHRODER
Germany's Chancellor-in-waiting has changed his tone on Europe, but not
his mind, says Andrew Gimson Berlin GERHARD SCHRODER, who is tipped to become the next chancellor of Ger- many, was much taken in 1966 with Perry Mason, the American television lawyer. Herr Schroder liked the idea of being 'a modem Robin Hood, always on the side of justice, who supports the underdog and the wrongly convicted'. So at least we are told in the biography of him by Bela Anda and Rolf Kleine, two well-informed journalists for Bild, Germany's equivalent of the Sun.
Many people will vote for Herr Schroder in the general election on 27 September as the nearest thing they are being offered to Robin Hood: a dashing populist who loves making merry in the greenwood and is pleasantly susceptible to Maid Marian, but above all the champion who can beat the hated Helmut Kohl, Germany's answer to the Sheriff of Nottingham. It would be impertinent for a foreigner to warn the Germans that Herr Schroder is no Robin Hood. The speed with which he has jetti- soned wives and policies that might hinder his rise to power is exemplary. Lost causes have no hold on him. He avoids the error made by most of the German Social Democrats, which is to yearn for a return to a time before Herr Kohl. Herr Schroder is realistic enough to accept his predeces- sor's legacy, just as Tony Blair accepted Margaret Thatcher's.
But as far as Europe is concerned, Herr Kohl's legacy has changed within the last few months. The launch of the euro on 1 January 1999 is now accepted as certain. Nobody in Bonn now talks, as they did this time last year, of the possibility, even the probability, that the evil day of the Ger- man mark's death might be postponed. There is therefore no advantage for Herr Schroder in trying to defend the mark. As he put it when I interviewed him for the Daily Telegraph: 'This debate is over. The decision has been taken. It makes no sense trying to win yesterday's battles.'
The speed with which Herr Schroder has switched his line on the new currency is nevertheless rather dizzying. He is no longer the man who might have the courage to lead Germany back from the brink, but the self-proclaimed 'pragmatist' who knows how to make the euro work a task, he says, that will require the great- est possible integration of Europe's tax and welfare systems. To British Euroscep- tic ears, it may sound as if Herr Schroder has sold out and been absorbed into the Bonn establishment even before undergo- ing the formality of winning the general election. The work of European integra- tion will proceed where Herr Kohl left off, with the German people reluctantly accepting what their rulers decide is good for them, just as they are at present swal- lowing a spelling reform which 84 per cent of them oppose.
My own impression is that this view is too fatalistic and underestimates the even- tual capacity of the German people to demand self-government, as well as the purely tactical element in Herr Schroder's behaviour. He has not abandoned his gut feeling that the euro is built on sand — his very insistence on the need for huge but- tressing measures is evidence of that. If the thing ever shows incontrovertible signs of going wrong, he will not sit tight, like poor Norman Lamont during the ERM crisis, but will show marvellous powers of deci- sion in leading the rush for the lifeboats (if there are any). But he believes, quite right- ly, that although hatred of Brussels may promote an embarrassingly high turn-out for extremist parties, it will not decide the central contest between himself and Herr `The Americans must have a spy.' Kohl. And he sees strong reasons for avoiding a row about Europe before the election, when he stands to lose far more votes by exposing the disunity on the issue between himself and the rest of the Social Democrat hierarchy than he would gain from inveterate Eurosceptics.
On the day the euro is launched, Ger- many takes over the presidency of the European Union. Herr Schroder will have no interest, only months after his election as chancellor, in setting himself up as the scapegoat for any difficulties the new cur- rency may undergo. He can hear the massed chorus of Europe's leader-writers condemning the 'fatal lack of political will shown by Chancellor Schroder' which has led the financial markets to 'scent weak- ness' and mark the euro down. So at the very time that Herr Kohl was attempting, in the aftermath of the disastrous Brussels summit at which the French had demanded and been given the right to appoint Wim Duisenberg's successor as head of the European Central Bank, to regain some credit with the German people by attacking the EU, Herr Schroder moved in the oppo- site direction, becoming a statesmanlike defender of the euro.
Neat footwork by Herr Schroder, one may think. He avoids the danger of a Eurosceptic auction, in which he could sud- denly find himself written off as the foolish young hothead who would throw away all the hard-won trust Germany has built up within Europe. He declines at this stage to do battle with the pedagogues of the Ger- man press, who see it as their life's work to educate the German people up to their own high level of self-renouncing Euro- commitment. If those prosy fools choose to believe that after visiting a few European capitals Herr Schroder has suddenly seen the light, let them persist in that illusion until he chooses to enlighten them.
A perceptive reader wrote recently to the Berliner Zeitung to complain that it was pos- sible to extract only one clear message from Herr Schroder's performances: 'Sixteen years of Kohl are enough.' This is true: the campaign has been even freer than normal from any precise commitments, for fear that these might repel more people than they attract. Herr Schroder is determined to win with free hands. He asks the German peo- ple to trust him to run the show better than Herr Kohl recently has. The truth is that neither Herr Schroder nor anyone else real- ly knows how Germany's European policy, or Europe itself, will develop. He is far more open to new ideas than the majority of the German political class, and far read- ier to defend without shame or furtiveness the German national interest. Dogmas like the alliance with France mean little to him: if Mr Blair can offer an Anglo-German pro- ject that promises more, Herr SchrOder will accept it.
Andrew Gimson is the Daily Telegraph's Berlin correspondent.
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