Paper industry bosses in Germany have hit back at claims by the national electoral commission that a lack of paper might hinder the timing of the country’s early elections.
“We have paper,” the seemingly exasperated head of the trade association for the German paper industry, Alexander von Reibnitz, told the state broadcaster ZDF, adding: “The German paper industry is very productive … we can deliver as long as the order is submitted in a timely manner.”
The head of the electoral commission, Ruth Brand, made headlines over the weekend with her remarks about the danger of holding the snap election without enough preparation time. Among her fears were that electioneering might clash with Christmas festivities, or Easter, as well as the popular carnival season, when days of street festivals dominate the calendar in western Germany in particular.
Talk of early elections was sparked last week when the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, sacked his finance minister, Christian Lindner, in a lengthy row about how to fill a hole in the budget. The pro business liberal Free Democratic party (FDP)- led by Lindner- has now left the government and there are plans for a vote of confidence in the Bundestag.
Given that Scholz’s government would probably lose, new elections would then be on the cards for anytime between January and the middle of April.
On Monday, an earlier vote looked more likely after the embattled chancellor’s remaining coalition partner, the Greens, joined opposition parties in calling on him to provide clarity, saying it did not favour a long wait. The majority of voters would also like a speedy election, polls suggest.
Brand, however, has warned of “unforeseeable risks at all levels, especially at the municipal level” if elections are called with little warning. She has urged decision-makers to steer clear of Christmas and the New Year, saying that nobody will be in the mood for electioneering or for listening to politicians’ election bids at that time. She has also referred to her concerns that there “might not be enough paper available to be able to print all the documents” so quickly, especially ballot papers for the more than 60 million people eligible to vote.
“It really is a big challenge in the current times to get hold of the paper and to carry out the printing process,” she told the TV news programme Tagesschau.
The remarks drew scorn and derision from across Europe, with neighbouring Poland gleefully offering to come to Berlin’s aid.
“If Germany need printers and paper, we will be able to sell both to our neighbours, and Polish companies would be happy to profit from this, and boost the nation’s GDP,” Dariusz Joński, an MEP for the centre-left Citizens’ Coalition said.
The rightwing opposition Law and Justice party urged Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, “to come to the aid of his German friends”.
Germany is the leading paper producer in the EU, manufacturing almost 13m cubic metres in 2022. Poland is the seventh largest, with an annual production of about 3.5m cubic metres.
Authorities are still smarting from the embarrassment of the botched Berlin election of September 2021, when insufficient ballot papers were available to voters, with many delivered to the wrong polling booths. The election had to be repeated for the first time in Germany’s history. Organisers blamed the clash with the Berlin Marathon which was taking place on the same weekend, a situation which authorities have vowed would never be repeated.
