Posted by 
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the European Union’s trade policy on Wednesday, urging Brussels to accelerate negotiations on free-trade deals.
Scholz’s broadside, which came in a speech to German lawmakers on the eve of an EU summit, arrived as the bloc’s leaders discuss who will fill the top jobs in Brussels following gains for the protectionist political right in this month’s European election.
“I am saying quite clearly here that I am not satisfied with the results of the European Union’s trade policy,” the Social Democrat chancellor said. “Something has to change dramatically.”
Scholz’s comments reflect his concern over Germany’s prolonged weakness as the bloc’s largest economy and industrial powerhouse. The country has strayed into troubled waters since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, an event that hit its export-dependent economy hard by causing supply chains to collapse, global demand to fall and energy prices to surge.
The International Monetary Fund expects growth of 0.9 percent in Germany this year, below the 1.4 percent it predicts for advanced economies in general.
Brussels calls the shots on behalf of the EU’s 27 member countries in trade talks — but the trade-friendly stance of its bureaucrats is not shared in some European capitals, with French President Emmanuel Macron a noted skeptic and the new Dutch coalition steered by Geert Wilders adopting a similar stance.
“We haven’t handed over our competence in trade policy and trade agreements to the European Union so that no agreements are concluded, but rather to ensure that these agreements are more effective, larger and done faster,” Scholz said.
Three’s a crowd
The German leader flagged troubled trade relations with Indonesia, India and the South American Mercosur bloc.
Negotiations with all three have stalled — although it’s not immediately obvious that Scholz was assigning blame in the right direction.
Indonesia is skeptical of the environmental conditions the EU attaches to trade deals; India showed less interest in cutting a deal before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent election for a third term; and France led a campaign to stop the Mercosur accord, which has been two decades in the making.
Scholz’s speech echoed remarks he made earlier this week to a German business audience, in which he called for the bloc to strike “EU only” trade deals that wouldn’t be subject to ratification by national and regional parliaments — a process that can take years.
Splitting such accords is already a tried and trusted playbook that has delivered agreements such as the EU’s trade deal with Chile. It enables the Council of the EU and the European Parliament to fast-track trade wins while other aspects of an overall deal, such as investment protection, are ratified separately.
Scholz faces complicated negotiations at home as well.
“We will present the draft budget in July,” the chancellor said in his speech to the Bundestag, referring to the country’s estimated €40 billion budget hole.
The survival of Scholz’s government may well depend on whether its constituent parties can come to a budget agreement without a major clash following their calamitous European election results, in which the three members of Germany’s left-leaning coalition together mustered only 31 percent of the vote.
“More security. More cohesion. More growth. These are the priorities for our country. But these are also the priorities for the European Union,” Scholz said.
