Germany’s election is revealingly European

GERMAN ELECTIONSEUSPDCDUCSU are idiosyncratic affairs. Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democrat Union, was grilled over his choice of bratwurst condiment (ketchup, not mustard). Annalena Baerbock, the Green candidate for chancellor, was skewered over plagiarism claims, a sin that bedevils only German politics. All politics is local, but in Germany it is parochial. The country may be Europe’s hegemon, yet foreign affairs and the future of the were barely mentioned. An at times surreal campaign ended with Angela Merkel, the outgoing chancellor and most powerful person in Europe, being photographed with a parrot on her head.If the campaign was unmistakably German, the result was European. A slim victory for the Social Democratic Party () over its centre-right rivals, the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister the Christian Social Union (/), will kick off months of coalition negotiations. German politicians struggled with the same problems as their peers across the continent; German voters behaved the same way as their neighbours. Europe was invisible in the campaign. But it is visible in the outcome.