The results of Sunday’s election are hard to predict, and the formation of a government could take weeks or months to play out. But when the dust settles, polls indicate that the new chancellor could be the left-leaning Social Democratic Party’s Olaf Scholz, who steered Germany’s economy through the pandemic as finance minister in a coalition with Merkel. Meanwhile, the Greens could more than double their number of seats in parliament.Scholz’s SPD and the Greens could partner with the pro-business Free Democratic Party, gaining enough power to shift the country’s economic agenda to the left. Taxation and spending could increase as political leaders double down on digitization and climate policy, while wariness about rising government debt may take a back seat.
“Greens and liberals in a coalition would bring the freshest innovative forces that we have had in a while in a German government,” said Carsten Brzeski, ING’s global head of…
