Why Germany’s new government is not about to go soft on the euro

FOR nearly half a year serious business in the European Union has been on hold as Germany struggled to cobble together a government. On March 4th the waiting came to an end when the centre-left Social Democratic Party declared that its members had voted two-to-one to rejoin Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in coalition. The sighs of relief in Paris and Brussels were almost audible. Yet inside the Willy Brandt Haus, the SPD’s Berlin headquarters, the mood was distinctly flat. So divisive had the issue been that party apparatchiks agreed in advance to mute their reactions to the result. The SPD has secured juicy ministries and all sorts of policy concessions from Mrs Merkel. But announcing the news on Sunday, Olaf Scholz, the SPD’s acting chairman and the presumed next finance minister, displayed all the enthusiasm of a funeral celebrant on Xanax.