With less than two weeks to go before the German parliamentary elections, Dr Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats have been given a boost by the victory of their sister Christian Social Union party in Bavaria at the weekend. The Chancellor remains a formidable campaigner and this result will redouble his determination to narrow the Social Democrats' lead in the opinion polls. With the smaller parties still lagging, a grand coalition remains the most likely outcome in what has so far been an uninspiring but nonetheless strategically a very important election.
Dr Kohl concentrated his fire yesterday on the possibility of a Red-Green alliance between the Social Democrats and the environmental party. His tactic is clearly to frighten off the volatile undecided voters whose number has been growing and whom he insists will decide which party to support only in the last few days of the campaign. He expects to ram home the message that they should prefer continuity and stability to uncertain change by returning the Christian Democrat-led coalition with the Liberal Democrats and the CSU.
His task has been made easier by the Greens' uncanny talent for shooting themselves politically in the foot over matters such as travel abroad, autobahn speeding, the price of petrol and certain foreign policy issues. This reflects continued feuding between the party's realist and fundamentalist wings and its refusal to adopt a conventional style of party leadership. As a result their popular support has nearly halved, despite the record of successful government in several Lander and the universally recognised talents of their most prominent figure, Mr Joshka Fischer.
The final days of the campaign will test the Green approach to its limits. There is much to be said for Mr Fischer's insistence that only a Green coalition with the Social Democrats would guarantee the reformist credentials of the larger party, given the readiness of its candidate for chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, to tack opportunistically between its classical welfare concerns and the widespread desire among the business class for more deregulation and labour market flexibility. He has talked up the desirability of a grand coalition, which Dr Kohl rejects, to keep his options open as wide as possible.
Domestic issues continue to predominate, among which unemployment at over four million people, especially in the east, remains most important. Dr Kohl may well lose the election on foot of it, for he lags most pronouncedly there behind the Social Democrats. The post-communist PDS party remains strong in the east, but is ruled out of coalition formation. So far, the extreme right has not shown up sufficiently strongly to win more that the 5 per cent necessary to enter the Bundestag. Judged by the Bavarian result, where it secured only 1.7 per cent, the other smaller party, the liberal FDP, will struggle to get over the threshold too. But many commentators have pointed out that Bavaria is sui generis in this campaign and should not be used to extrapolate nationally.
Whichever combination of parties wins will be in power at a crucial time in Germany history, as the national capital moves to Berlin and Germany's future role in Europe is determined. An effective German government is all the more important for the continent, given the growing turbulence in the world's economic and political affairs.