How a year of Olaf Scholz has changed and shaped Germany
Olaf Scholz has not been dealt the best of hands. Replacing Angela Merkel after her 16 years of steady -- if staid -- rule was never going to be easy.
Doing so in the midst of a brutal confluence of crises ranging from a war in Europe, the pandemic and exploding inflation has only made that job more difficult.
While Merkel was seen as a tough act to follow, the first year of Scholz’s term has represented a significantly more seismic shift away from the Merkel era than anyone could have expected.
Merkel navigated her own web of crises with unflappable calm, quietly and confidently exuding an aura that her way was the only possible one – whether you agreed with her or not.
Scholz doesn’t have quite the same "Mutti" vibe.
While coming off as a competent -- if sometimes technocratic -- manager, he can bristle when pushed and has been accused of having an arrogant approach to communication.
He hasn’t just separated himself from the Merkel years stylistically.
In some ways, nearly two decades of conservative rule means nearly any progressive legislation at all is enough to set the Scholz government apart.
Elsewhere, foreign policy and energy crises have made disentangling Germany from decades of poor choices more difficult.
All this has occurred within the confines of an often awkward three-way coalition between Scholz’s centre-left SPD, the Greens, and the liberal FDP.
For better or worse, for the first time in a long time, German politics are interesting again.
“The last year has been insane. Absolutely insane,” Rasha Nasr, 29, an SPD member of parliament representing Dresden told Euronews, speaking about his first legislative period.
Scholz’s defining policy to date wasn’t a promised campaign reform, but an
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