BERLIN: With a pandemic crisis meeting and debut appearances in Paris and Brussels, Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his team hit the ground running on their first day in office Thursday.
After a ceremony-laden handover from Angela Merkel on Wednesday, Scholz sat down with regional leaders of Germany’s 16 states to discuss the coronavirus pandemic.
“We want to act quickly and decisively when it is necessary,” Scholz said after the meeting, stressing that he wanted “ensure that as many citizens as possible are vaccinated,” including with third booster doses.
With intensive care beds filling up and new variant omicron adding to fears, Scholz’s coalition of his Social Democrats, the ecologist Greens and the liberal FDP was already dragged into fighting the pandemic before being sworn in.
Underlining the “deadly serious” situation, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had during Wednesday’s investiture ceremony pointedly urged Scholz to “ensure that the pandemic does not keep us firmly in its grip for another year.”
Scholz, 63, has already called for Germany to follow Austria’s example and introduce mandatory jabs, pushed by Germany’s stagnating inoculation rate.
But he may have many more tough decisions to make.
Scholz “stands before a difficult chancellorship,” said the Tagesspiegel daily, noting that the pandemic was not just an epidemiological emergency but also leading to bitter divisions in society.
“Debates are being conducted in an adamant fashion, camps are being formed that are hardly building any bridges to others,” it said, noting that it “would come down to the chancellor” to resolve the bitter divides.
While fighting fires at home, Scholz also took his first step onto the world stage, taking part in a virtual Summit for Democracy organized by the United States.
Scholz is no stranger to the diplomatic circuit, having been mayor of Hamburg when the city played host to the G20 summit and also having served as finance minister in Merkel’s cabinet over the last four years.
While he has pledged continuity, international observers will be closely watching for any shifts in tone given the switch from a conservative-led government after 16 years to a center-left-led alliance.
Scholz will head to Paris on Friday for his first official visit, where he is to meet France’s President Emmanuel Macron.
He will then travel on to Brussels for talks with EU leaders and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.
But ahead of him, his Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens already made her debut appearances in both key European capitals on Thursday.
“Europe is the lynchpin for our foreign policy,” Baerbock said in a statement ahead of the visit.
“We will not seek to pursue our ideas and interests… at the cost of” Germany’s neighbors, she added.
Baerbock, who is Germany’s first woman foreign minister, has pledged to take a tougher line with authoritarian states like Russia and China after the business-driven pragmatism of Merkel’s era.
And the first signs of friction within the freshly minted government could well arise from here, as Scholz has so far taken a cautious tone on issues such as the US’ diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Even as Baerbock was about to embark on her trips, Scholz appeared to assert his authority over her portfolio.
Asked at a TV interview on Wednesday if Baerbock or he will determine foreign policy, Scholz said that “we will act together as a government — and that starts with the head of government.”
That may appear obvious. But as Spiegel noted, “given the differing views within the coalition, the statement is significant.”