Parties Set Tone for 2007
January 8, 2007
Controversial German health care reforms look set to top the agenda when the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, meets today.
The proposed revamp of the 140 billion euro system has divided Merkel's grand coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats for months. CSU leader and Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber has been one of the chief opponents of the reform, fearing that wealthy German states such as his own would carry the majority of the financial burden of the planned changes.
Stoiber, however, signaled his readiness to compromise and said he was confident the draft law would take effect on April 1 as planned.
"I am optimistic that the healthcare reform will go into force as agreed," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Old plans ring in New Year
The beginning of January is a traditional time for Germany's political parties to map out their policies for the year ahead with the SPD and the free-market liberal Free Democrats holding important meetings over the weekend.
Labor markets reforms were the main policy focus of the two-day SPD leadership gathering in the northern German city of Bremen.
Among the reform proposals agreed were the introduction of a minimum wage and a scheme to reduce the amount of social contributions for low earners as a way of getting long-term unemployed back to work. The SPD also put forward an idea to guarantee all-day childcare, paid for by the government, to all children between the agea of one and five.
SPD to sharpen party profile
The policies decided over the weekend were a clear attempt to appeal to the center-left party's traditional base. With many supporters complaining that the party has abandoned social principles and that its policies have become indistinct from those of the CDU, senior SPD members wanted to sharpen the party's profile.
SPD party chairman Kurt Beck told the meeting that the party would focus more on ensuring that social welfare was not neglected.
"People that are prepared to work have to receive special recognition, but the weak must not be allowed to drop by the wayside," he said.
The Social Democrats have recently been losing ground in the ratings with support dropping by 1 percent to 30 percent in one of the most recent opinion polls conducted by German public broadcaster ARD. Meanwhile the CDU achieved a six-month high of 36 percent in the same survey.
Liberals to show social side
Germany's grand coalition government came under attack at Saturday's meeting of the opposition Free Democrats in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart. FDP party leader Guido Westerwelle attacked what he sees as the sluggish pace of economic reform in Germany, describing it as "slow motion" politics.
Westerwelle also painted a more socially oriented picture of the free-market party at the gathering.
"Our policies of economic reason are far more social than any red flag, whether it's from the SPD, the Greens, the ex-communists or even what we've heard lately from the CDU," he said.
Westerwelle also criticized firms for their lack of social responsibility.
"It is not acceptable that when company results are made public that the salaries of board members are increased by 30 percent and at the same time thousands of redundancies are announced," he said.