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Business as Usual in Merkel Country

Is Germany's New Government Taking Its Job Seriously?

By SPIEGEL Staff

Many thought that Merkel's new governing coalition, which pairs her with the business-friendly Free Democrats, would be heavy on the reform and light on concern for Germany's socially needy. Instead, after three weeks of bickering, the new coalition has produced status quo -- just radically more expensive.

It was a campaign poster that neatly summed up the fears many Germans held prior to the country's September general elections. The Social Democrats plastered warnings in cities and towns across the country that a governing coalition pairing Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives with the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) would result in a leadership characterized by cold, unfeeling economic liberalism. Both Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Guido Westerwelle's FDP, so went the message, wanted to slash social programs and shower benefits on the rich.

Indeed, it was Westerwelle, in particular, who had presented himself as a worthy target for the left side of Germany's political spectrum. During the campaign, he promised hefty tax cuts, a rethinking of the country's only-recently introduced health care reforms and a loosening of employment laws to make it easier for companies to jettison unwanted employees.

But three weeks of bickering among the CDU, the FDP and the Christian Social Union (CSU -- the CDU's Bavarian sister party) have made it clear: Those who worried, need not have. Westerwelle has arrived in Merkel's joyless school of political realism. It is a place with a dream shredder just inside the entrance, one which quickly disposed of Westerwelle's ideas for radical labor market reform and a speedy transformation of the health-care system. His tax-cut hopes were shrunk considerably.

Nothing Changes too Quickly

Minor reforms are taking place here and there, but by and large the republic will remain the same. Instead of becoming more black (the CDU's official color) or more yellow (the FDP's), or even more black-and-yellow, it will remain good old Merkel Country, a comforting sort of place for those who live there, and a place where nothing changes too quickly or too rigorously.

The new administration is not even offering the country a single significant project or idea. Yet, in doing so, the new government plans to sharply drive up the country's debt to make room for tax cuts. Indeed, the coalition even briefly considered establishing a shadow budget to get around Germany's new, constitutionally anchored law requiring the budget to be balanced.

Such fiscal deception belies the center-right's traditional claim of solidity. But what it is now proposing is not solid at all. In fact, it is nothing but the usual shifting of burdens into the future, with one significant difference: the massive scope of it all.

Merkel's new coalition lacks the courage to tell citizens that they are living in a serious economic crisis and that government handouts are not to be expected. It's likely that almost everyone would have understood had Berlin chosen honesty over handouts, particularly in today's economic climate. Instead, the government behaves as if there were no crisis -- as if there cannot be a crisis as long as Angela Merkel is running the country.

Indecisiveness -- the Hallmark of Her Administration

Merkel's second term begins on Wednesday, when parliament rubber stamps her new government. She will, she promised shortly after the general elections, become the chancellor of "all Germans." It is a pleasant-sounding platitude, but it means that Merkel has absolutely no intention of taking positions that would be unpopular with any group of voters. Instead, indecisiveness will remain the hallmark of her administration.

She has had a number of years to practice. During the last four years, in a governing coalition which paired her with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel weaned herself away from idealism, instead taking a pragmatic, one-step-at-a-time approach. She became the master of the disappointing compromise.

No matter how feeble those compromises are, they always end with a satisfied chancellor facing the cameras to tell the German public how pleased she is to have reached a compromise at all. She has become adept at pointing out how difficult it all is: working with the difficult SPD, the difficult FDP and the supremely difficult governors of Germany's states.

The message is jarring. She often indicated that the outgoing coalition with the SPD was little more than a transition period -- a time during which little would change -- after which a CDU/CSU-FDP government would enter office and shake things up. But now that Merkel has the coalition she has long wished for, her agenda is remarkably free from reforms. What exactly are they waiting for?

Yet even more concerning than the lack of ambition is the aftertaste left behind by the rough-and-tumble negotiations between the supposedly allied parties. It was surprising as well, particularly given the bond that exists between Merkel and Westerwelle. The two get along well, partly, no doubt, because both are outsiders in their own way. Merkel is a woman from former East Germany leading a party that has always been dominated by men from the West. Westerwelle, for his part, is homosexual, a fact he long chose to conceal in public before appearing at Merkel's 50th birthday party in 2004 with his partner in tow.

The Vast Chasm

Still, the personal affinity between the two was not enough to conceal the vast chasm separating their two political camps when it came to hammering out a coalition agreement. One CDU politician described the talks as "terribly bureaucratic and exhausting" adding that Germany's new leadership "has no idea how to spread a spirit of optimism in the country."

The talks began just days after the election results were in, and a pattern was quick to emerge. The CDU/CSU politicians behaved like experienced government warhorses determined to let the FDP foals know what was and was not going to work on their government pasture. "The attitude among the CDU/CSU was this: We're not changing a thing here," says an FDP politician who served as a negotiator in the foreign affairs and defense group.

Indeed, it quickly became apparent that the CDU and the CSU were dead-set on one thing above all others: defending Merkel Country.

"The FDP was in the opposition for 11 years, which leads to radicalization," said one CDU/CSU negotiator, by way of explanation. "Negotiations aren't therapy sessions. There are experts for that. We're politicians."

The CDU/CSU negotiators were particularly annoyed by the FDP repeatedly placing on the agenda its goal of weakening current legal protections against job termination, and continuing to do so until the last day of the meetings, even though Merkel had announced at the beginning that the effort would not succeed with her in charge.