Germany: Europe nervously awaits the outcome

With the EU's largest country and biggest paymaster staging elections, most key decisions in Brussels are on hold. Tomorrow's results in Germany may decide how some of the biggest European issues are resolved. They include:

* The Franco-German alliance Jacques Chirac, the French President, has made little secret of his hopes for a victory by Edmund Stoiber. That, of course, means that Britain (among others) is hoping for the opposite. Britain's new, hard-won influence in Brussels will be diluted by a reinvigorated Franco-German alliance.

* Common Agricultural Policy reform In Berlin in 1999, Mr Chirac sabotaged Gerhard Schröder's plans to reform the CAP. The German Chancellor has not forgotten that night and will demand guarantees from France that spending on agriculture will be pegged. Mr Stoiber takes a more emollient line.

* Turkey Wants to start negotiations with the EU on membership, something opposed by Mr Stoiber's Christian Democrats.

* Enlargement Mr Schrö-der and Mr Stoiber favour eastward expansion of the EU, but both are wary of public opinion, which is nervous. Mr Stoiber has clashed with the Czech government over the post-war treatment of Sudetenland Germans.

* Iraq Part of Mr Schröder's recovery in the polls has been based on his opposition to military action. Mr Stoiber has been more circumspect.