brent: let's talk about martin scholz, the candidate for the social democrats. melinda: his approval ratings are quite high. german say they will give 36% of the vote to mr. schulz. that is a gap, but certainly not as bad as the gap would've in. -- would have been. brent: if you look at what we are going to see in germany and compare that to the elections across other european countries, angela merkel, the chancellor, she is a committed european and defender of the eu. so is martin schulz. you have these two defenders running from the same office in germany. is that a good move in this era of skepticism? melinda: martin schulz said the social democratic party has done the work against populism and right-wing nationalism. and he intends to make it run in the selection. -- in this election. i will be doing it without bashing the eu because europe is the absolute fundament of foundation. doing the ordinary -- telling the ordinary man, the working man. why he is protected in germany and we will make the lives of his children stable and better. a clear message for ex

think he can unseat merkel as the former president of the european parliament, one consults -- martin scholzes he have what it takes? reporter: it is all about martin show. he is completing -- getting ready for a new campaign. he is very careful about his wording, concerning relationships with the american president. >> donald trump is the democratically elected american president. as such, he is entitled to the respect officially due to him, but our values and treaty relatiave must also be respected. i expect that of the president of the united states. reporter: as far as domestic policies are concerned, scholz's key phrase is social justice. >> in one of the most -- prosperous countries in the world, we have distribution of wealth. we need to strengthen relationships between employers and employees. we need better, and permanent relationships. reporter: he wants to make one thing clear, he wants a big earners to pay more tax. how this will be of limited is not clear yet. in the upcoming eight months, he has to show his colors, and most importantly, define how his policies differ from those

the spd decided this week to hand over its top post to martin scholz, who spent most of his career in the e.u. parliament. as party leader and candidate for chancellor, he wants to give the social democrats a new face as the champion of the ordinary man and woman. he's thrown down the gauntlet to populists as well as germany's popular chancellor. candidate schulz. can merkel be beaten? that is the question we want to pose to three people who follow politics in germany. it is a pleasure to welcome ulrike guerot. she is the founder and director of the think tank, european democracy lab, and she says populism claims to united nations, but actually divides them. it is great to have derek scally with us on the show once again, the germany correspondent for the "irish times." his statement, the spd and martin schulz have to decide what they want to the. is with usosener once again. he's a political commentator for "die welt" and he says martin schulz has spent his entire political life in brussels. he has no idea how germany functions. he will lead the spd into oblivion. i would like to ask

martin scholz. however, merkel still have a substantial lead.sal to pardon more than 3000 prisoners, saying the measure is sparking antigovernment protests in major cities, and it is not designed to benefit politicians in romania, but to improve the situations in prisons. the romanian president says that proposal should be scrapped. others say it reverses the progress made by the ongoing anticorruption drive and benefits those group -- convicted of corruption. global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. thank you. coming up, what the democratic senator jack reed said about president trump's travel ban. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪ is bloomberg markets. scarlet: time for the bloomberg business flash when we look at some of the biggest stories in the news. policymakers are urging the european union to set up a bank to tackle the money in loans. the target is the move as much as 267 billion of nonperforming loans to that bank. one proposal is to set up a company to take over

parliament president martin to challenge her against populara much more politician. those scholze spd a bigger threat? >> what he really brings is popularity. if you look at the sort of opinion polls on individual tz is moreul popular than merkel. coattails and play where you have a popular person at the top of the ticket and in theory, that will lift the party as a whole. let us talk a little bit about how much of a threat scholz is in terms of the fourth term. give me the details. schultz will be taking over the party and essentially running a campaign that is going to be more to the left than what gabriele would have run with. what is going for him is the fact that he is not part of the grand coalition that has alienated a lot of spd voters, so he will be focusing on sort of being this outsider, if you will. he spent most of his career in e.u. politics. chad: he has been in the e.u. parliament since the mid-90's, so he'll be able to come in, and we don't know exactly what policies he will be espousing, but certainly more to the left. matt: this is a huge deal yesterday when th