Germany's COVID-19 Response: Politics and Challenges

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

Wolfgang Münchau is co-founder and director of Eurointelligence. He was a Financial Times columnist from 2003 until 2020 and co-founder and editor-in-chief of Financial Times Deutschland. He is the author of several books, including Meltdown Years. In this podcast, we discuss:

1. The unpopularity of Germany’s governing party, the CDU and its new leader Laschet.
2. Laschet’s support for the coal industry.
3. The popularity of sister party CSU’s leader Söder and his new economy focus.
4. The possibility of a CDU and CSU split.
5. Why are Greens so popular in Germany?
6. The fiscal implications of Greens in power.
7. Germany’s constitutional constraints on fiscal policy.
8. Why far-right AfD has performed poorly recently.
9. The mismanagement of COVID and the political impact.
10. Does the EU Recovery Fund signal a common EU fiscal policy?
11. Will EU climate policy be successful?
12. Book that influenced Wolfgang: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (Mommsen), Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (MacMillan).