German coalition relaxing laws on foreigners

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "The Red-Greens' policy on foreigners jeopardizes security in Germany more than the terrorism of the Red Army Faction," said Edmund Stoiber, premier of Bavaria, in a recent interview. "We do not want a multi-cultural society." But he's going to get it -- and a great deal else that he doesn't like besides.

Stoiber, the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), is widely seen as the man likeliest to lead the right-wing coalition in Germany's next election, but that is almost four years away. For now, at least, the "Red-Greens" -- the Social Democrats (SPD) and their junior partners, the Greens -- are in power, and after 16 years in opposition they are moving fast to make up for lost time.

In the first weeks after the election, as they scrambled to form a cabinet, the new partners looked distinctly unready for power. But three months later, the policies coming out of Bonn on a wide variety of issues -- citizenship, NATO, Europe, nuclear power -- are breathtakingly bold by comparison with the past.

Germany's neighbors and allies have grown used to a country that is far less assertive than its size and wealth (80 million people and the world's third-largest economy) would normally suggest. The older generation of German politicians felt a residual sense of guilt about Germany's past, and were always aware of the acute sensitivies of their smaller neighbors.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's cabinet are a new generation, and they are challenging the old pieties in ways that were unthinkable during the Cold War. For example, the new government is committed "to campaign to lower the alert status of nuclear weapons and for a renunciation of the first use of nuclear weapons."

The 'right' to use nuclear weapons first has always been a stated NATO doctrine, and for the Pentagon it is the strategic Holy of Holies. No NATO member has ever challenged it openly before. But this German government (with strong Canadian support) is determined to take it all the way to the NATO 50th anniversary summit in April which is supposed to define the alliance's new "strategic concept".

Bonn is being equally forthright on the European unity issue.

It is following in the footsteps of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who promoted European monetary union mainly as a way of making closer political integration unavoidable -- but where Kohl tiptoed and dissimulated, Schroeder's government just says what it thinks.

This month's launch of the euro, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (leader of the Greens) told the European Parliament on Jan. 12, was "not primarily an economic, but rather a sovereign and political act. Europe has already changed far more than most of our citizens have realized: a significant section of national sovereignty has been transferred." Kohl could not have put it better -- but he would never have put it that bluntly in public.

The Schroeder government's motives are the same as Kohl's: to embed Germany so deeply in "Europe" that the hostilities and fears that drove the continent to war so many times in the past can never re-emerge. But Germany holds the presidency of the European Union (EU) for the next six months, and its goals are very ambitious.

"Political union, including new member states...is the logical follow-on from economic and monetary union," said Fischer, urging the EU to move on from the old unanimity principle and accept majority decision-making in all areas except amending the basic treaties. As a first step towards a federal constitution for Europe, he added, Germany would propose a "European Charter of Basic Rights to consolidate the legitimacy and identity of the EU."

Strong stuff -- and the domestic initiatives have been just as radical. Ending all reprocessing of plutonium (including canceling existing large contracts with Britain and France), for example, as a prelude to phasing out all nuclear power generation in Germany.

And, most controversially of all, opening up German citizenship to people who are not "ethnic" Germans.

Germany has around eight million residents who were born elsewhere, or are the children of "guest-workers" who came to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s to do the low-wage jobs that the Germans themselves did not want. They form about the same proportion of Germany's population as do recent immigrants and their families in Britain or the U.S. -- and, of course, most of them speak German, hold down jobs, pay taxes, and regard Germany as their home.

But whereas the comparable people in Britain or the U.S., except for very recent arrivals, are almost all citizens, none of the German residents are. Germany still adheres to the "Blood Law" of 1913 that restricted citizenship to people of German ancestry.

Resident "foreigners" in Germany might be granted citizenship after 15 years, but rarely if they were of Turkish origin (as half the "foreigners" in Germany are). And the lucky few recipients were required to burn their former passports in front of the judge.

That is all going to change. The new government will give "foreigners" born in Germany, and those resident there for over eight years, the right to a passport (and thus to vote). Third- generation "foreigners" born in Germany will automatically become citizens, and can hold dual nationality. It's estimated that some 4.2 million people could become German citizens fairly quickly -- which would certainly shift the electoral odds in favor of the left.

Maybe that's why the former ruling parties, the Christian Democrats and the CSU, have gone berserk. They have launched a nationwide petition to stop the changes that uses rhetoric verging on the racist. "It's a very dangerous development," says Guido Westerwelle, leader of the Free Democrats (who were also in the previous government). "They are raising ghosts that we may not be able to lay to rest."

But the "Reds" and the "Greens" are trying to drag Germany into the 20th century before it's over, and they may well succeed.

It will be a much better country for it, but it will take some getting used to.