Johann Chapoutot is a lecturer in modern history at the Sorbonne University in Paris and a expert on Nazism. In this interview with Mediapart he highlights the failures of the French handling of the Covid-19 pandemic since January by contrasting it with that of Germany, a country he knows well. The academic notes how the German authorities have been “open” and appealed to citizens' reason, while the French government, which was facing “strong challenges from all directions” before the crisis, seems “preoccupied solely with itself and shoring up its own power”.
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Mediapart: How can one explain how, up to this point, Germany has handled the Covid-19 epidemic better than France?
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Johann Chapoutot: First of all the Germans, that's to say the federal government and the regional governments of the Länder [editor's note, regional states], have followed medical practice. They've done what medical practice prescribes when there's a pandemic. Not a mass lockdown, which did not occur as such in Germany, but testing: tests were carried out systematically when they were minor or serious symptoms, and ill people were isolated and treated.
Why did Germany do it and not France? Because Germany has the industrial capacity to produce the tests. The fastest tests were devised by German scientists and industrialists at the end of January. And production was possible thanks to production capacity in the country: while France has undergone mass de-industrialisation, an industrial base of small and medium-sized companies remains in Germany, something which has been sacrificed in France.
So since the end of January Germany has done what we in France have promised to do after May 11th [editor's note, when a partial end of the lockdown begins]: to test, isolate and treat. While being aware that we're not even sure of being able to do that in France.
Mediapart: The spare capacity of German hospitals has also played a role, something which might seem in contradiction with the notion of a thrifty Germany based on the principle of repaying debt. What's your view on this?
J.C.: The figures on hospital beds are astonishing: 28,000 beds in intensive care were operational in Germany at the end of January, against barely 5,000 in France. What's that down to? Germany has economised on almost everything and there's a real problem here that a section of the employers' representatives also criticise: a lack of investment in roads, bridges, schools … but Germany hasn't economised on the health system.
Why? For the same reason that it economised on the rest. It applied its ordoliberal mantra on zero deficits, the schwarze Null [editor's note, literally “black zero” policy]. That is what the right-wing German electorate have demanded, an electorate made up of pensioners who have privately-funded pensions and who thus vote for a policy of economising and deflation.
In the same way, because of what this electorate wants, there haven't been economies in hospitals because it's an older electorate that does want to make savings - but not to the detriment of their health.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Mediapart: Is there another explanation for the clear differences in the handling of the epidemic?
J.C.: Yes. When Covid-19 first started emerging the German political authorities were open and receptive. They possessed a capacity for political and social appraisal, an ability to focus, which the French political authorities have lacked.
We need to go back a few weeks: the French government was focussed on the issue of pension reform. On February 29th 2020 a special meeting of the committee of ministers, which was supposedly about the coronavirus crisis, decided to apply Article 49-3 of the [French] Constitution to the pension reform legislation [editor's note, which allows a law to be forced through without a Parliamentary vote]. Secondly, the French government was already very weak, and facing strong challenges from all directions. It was preoccupied solely with itself and shoring up its own power.
Let's remember that the minister of health [editor's note, Agnès Buzyn] resigned on February 16th to save the [ruling party's] candidacy to be mayor of Paris [editor's note, in the local elections scheduled for March, only one round of which eventually took place] – that would be completely thinkable in Germany! The self-absorbed French government is also brutal, as shown by the treatment of doctors, nurses and care assistants who have had batons and tear-gas used on them during their many demonstrations over recent months [editor's note, as part of health service protests before the start of the Covid-19 crisis]. The result is that the French government, which was not listening, was no longer being listened to either.
Mediapart: Yet at the same time, the end of 2019, Angela Merkel herself also seemed in a weak position.
J.C.: Certainly, and indeed for more than a year. Ever since Angela Mekel gave up the presidency of the CDU [editor's note, the conservative Christian Democratic Union party from which she stood down as leader in October 2018], which was the first time a serving chancellor had relinquished the presidency of the ruling party. But it was her successor as leader of the CDU [editor's note, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer] who failed. Merkel herself was never challenged as chancellor. Her power was not challenged. Certainly not in the street, as the government in France was.
Mediapart: Would you say that, faced with the pandemic, German federalism is more effective than French ultra-centralisation?
J.C.: I'd tackle the question of federalism from a wider perspective, that of rational dialogue, of the concept that one has in Germany of citizenship and political decision-making. Everyone has picked up on the differences in tone between the announcements made by Angela Merkel on March 19th and the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier on April 11th on the one hand [editor's note, see below and on next page] and those made by Emmanuel Macron on the other.
Merkel, like Steinmeier, appealed to the audience's reason. I quote Merkel: “This is a dynamic situation and we will continue to learn …. to be able to rethink and respond with other tools at any moment....I ask you: do not believe any rumours … we are a democracy, we don't live by being forced but by sharing knowledge and collaboration.” Meanwhile Steinmeier said: “...We are a thriving democracy,with responsible citizens. A democracy in which we trust one another to listen to facts and arguments, to be wise and do the right thing.”
Merkel, like Steinmeier, was speaking to adults, to rational citizens. The contrast with France is clear, where they speak to us as if we're children. As [official French government spokesperson] Sibeth Ndiaye once said, she was comfortable with lying to “protect the president”. Incidentally, I wonder how it was possible to appoint as government spokesperson a woman who had made this declaration a few months earlier.
In France they lie to us. They congratulate us, they tell us off, they scold us and they reward us, as Macron does in his public comments; or they admonish or insult us, like the deplorable chief of police in Paris, Didier Lallement [editor's note, who caused a public row in early April after suggesting that people who were in intensive care with the Covid-19 virus were there because they had not respected the social distancing rules, remarks for which he apologised]. In France they conceal the government's very real powerlessness with ridiculous boasting. “We're at war,” said Macron, to which Steinmeier firmly and calmly responded: “No, this isn't a war.”
It's in this wider context that I see the question of federalism: the importance given in Germany to dialogue, consultation and reason. The federal structure means that Angela Merkel can't take a decision without consulting the 16 minister presidents [Ministerpräsident] of the 16 Länder or states. In France the measures announced during the last address [editor's note, by President Macron] on April 13th were communicated to [government] ministers fifteen minutes before the speech from the republican monarch who, in a lofty and superior manner, surprised even his own government. It's astonishingly archaic.
'There hasn't been a state of emergency in Germany'
Mediapart: Has Germany's Federal Constitutional Court intervened in the debate over the handling of the Covid-19 crisis and the strategies to end the lockdown?
J.C.: Not at this stage. But the German executive does speak and act under the control of two fundamental authorities, on the one hand the Parliament - the Bundestag - and on the other the Constitutional Court. This court is, incidentally, a genuinely legal entity, made up of lawyer.
This is nothing like the Constitutional Council in France which is a place for male and female politicians at the end of their career. In Germany it's a serious matter. The Federal Republic of Germany is also a genuine parliamentary republic. It's the Bundestag which governs via the means of the government. At any point it can withdraw its confidence.
Under France's state of emergency exceptional powers have been given to the French administration. No provision of this type has been made in Germany. For one simple reason: because of unfortunate historical precedents the attachment to individual liberties there is strong, as is the vigilance of citizens, including the media, over such issues.
In France right and fundamental freedoms have been completely neglected and trampled on by the government. This has happened since the state of emergency to tackle terrorism [editor's note, introduced in France after a series of terrorist attacks in 2015], some measures of which have remained part of common law since 2018, then the health-related state of emergency, where we know that, through a ratchet effect, many measures are also going to stay part of common law. Each time a state of emergency is voted in, we lose freedom. That's not the case in Germany.
Mediapart: Haven't there been tensions been Berlin and some regions over the handling of the epidemic, as we have seen in Spain?
J.C.: No. The dialogue has been harmonious. Federal and regional competence over the funding of hospitals is shared. But anything relating to public order – and thus the lockdown – such as the police is a regional matter.
Incidentally, we have seen some disparities between regions such as Bavaria and Saarland [editor's note, on the border with Luxembourg] who rapidly voted for and implemented the lockdown, and other Länder. To me that seems to be in line with cultural factors that you also find at a European and even global level.
On one side are some countries, such as France, Spain or Italy, which are marked by the culture of Catholicism, with a strong state presence which was itself inherited from the church. And on the other there are some states and geographical areas marked by Protestantism and the primacy of the individual where a laissez-faire approach dominates, sometimes even to the detriment of individuals' health, such as the United Kingdom or the United States. This division exists in Germany between Catholic regions such as Bavaria, where the lockdown was carried out in quite an authoritarian way, on the orders of its president Markus Söder from the [conservative Christian Social Union] CSU, and other Länder where fundamental freedoms are more important.
Mediapart: As it did over Greece in 2008, Berlin is continuing to oppose greater European Union solidarity towards countries more heavily affected by the epidemic, for example by mutualising some of the debts accumulated by the handling of the epidemic - the so-called 'corona bonds'. Is Angela Merkel's position on this still tenable?
J.C.: There has been a lively debate on these issues in Germany since 2008. Very early on Die Link [editor's note, 'The Left'] – an ally of La France Insoumise [editor's note, 'Unbowed France', a radical left party in France] pronounced itself in favour of mutualising some debts, and of European solidarity towards Athens. The Greens and a section of the [social-democrat] SDP later followed suit.
For several years employer groups on the political Right have warned about the politics of austerity and zero deficit: watch out, they said, it's a catastrophe, we are going to die rich because of a lack of structural investment which undermines our competitiveness. With regards to issuing common debt inside the eurozone, once again, some on the Right now explain that this solidarity would not just represent a cost for Berlin but a benefit too, given that German manufactured goods are sold more than anything in neighbouring European countries, not in China.
The debate is ongoing. And on this as on other issues Angela Merkel is pursuing a carefully-calculated policy. Among the elements that will play in her favour you have to mention the strategy of the AfD [editor's note, the far-right party] which was set up during the euro crisis precisely to oppose helping Greece, and which has just climbed back on to its old hobbyhorse. We must also see how the lines shift inside the SDP.
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- The French version of this interview can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter