Prominent Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber has declared his hopes of gaining the top foreign-policy post should his political coalition defeat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s government at the German elections this September.

The British daily, the Independent, reported today that “Edmund Stoiber, the right-wing Eurosceptic Bavarian leader, is in line to become the next German foreign minister if, as expected, the conservatives win this autumn’s general election, in a move that would transform Berlin’s policies on Europe” ( June 27).

Stoiber was a previous contender for the German chancellorship. His success in gaining the foreign minister’s post in a future conservative government in Germany could place him in a solid position for a future challenge to Angela Merkel’s leadership, should she gain the position of German chancellor at the upcoming elections. Germany has never had a female chancellor. Already there are rumbles that the public in general would have difficulty in adjusting to such. However, at the moment, for the Germans, comparing their current lackluster leadership with the opposition’s promises of better things, it’s hardly a real choice.

Faced with continuing, seemingly endemic, high levels of unemployment and other entrenched effects of disturbing systemic problems with its economy, heightened public outcries against its high levels of immigration, and the great loss of face in the failure of EU members to unify under Franco/German leadership, Germany is in a mood to ditch its present chancellor and give the conservatives an opportunity to try a different approach to addressing its current basket of woes.

If there is a change in government in September, and if Angela Merkel is game enough to let Herr Stoiber loose on the country’s foreign policy portfolio, stand by for fireworks in the EU!

A committed Roman Catholic and on friendly terms with his fellow Bavarian Pope Benedict xvi, Stoiber’s leadership of Germany’s foreign affairs would present quite a contrast to that of the present incumbent, Joschka Fischer.

“Nicknamed the ‘Bavarian pit bull,’ Mr. Stoiber is well known for his tough anti-immigration stance, his opposition to European enlargement and above all as the driving force behind conservative attempts to block Turkey’s membership of the EU.

“In stark contrast to Germany’s pro-European political mainstream, Mr. Stoiber opposed the introduction of the euro and called for a national referendum on European enlargement. He was also one of the few German politicians to demand that the abortive European constitution be subject to a national referendum” ( ibid.).

It is interesting to note that on the score of immigration, European enlargement and Turkey, Stoiber’s platform has much in common with that of Pope Benedict. Should he gain his desired post in a new German government, Stoiber will have a powerfully influential friend in Rome who could do much to sway the masses in the catholicized nations within the EU to adopt German foreign policy as EU foreign policy.

With Germany, and, by extension, the European Union, crying out for its current leadership vacuum to be filled, this combination of a powerful Bavarian pope, and a nationalistic, highly conservative German foreign minister, could be just what the doctor ordered for the recovery of unity within a boiled-down, hard-core federalist Europe, yearning for a way to assert itself in the global political arena.