Business as Usual in Merkel Country: Is Germany's New Government Taking Its Job Seriously?

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When it comes to health care, the resulting compromises are tenuous at best. The CDU and the FDP demanded the establishment of a health premium system, which the CSU opposed. The CSU and the FDP wanted to abolish the health care fund, which the CDU opposed. The FDP proposed expanding contract options between health insurance agencies and doctors, only to face an opposing alliance of some members of the CDU and CSU. In the end, everything remained more or less where it is today.

It should, then, come as no surprise that the deficit forecasts for Germany's health care system remain largely the same and that additional tax revenues will be needed. The CDU/CSU and the FDP are preparing themselves to pump more than €15 billion next year into a system both parties have already characterized as inefficient and wasteful.

Vagueness permeates the rest of the coalition agreement as well. On the environment, the coalition wants to develop a concrete plan to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent by 2050 with alliances of power plants that use renewable fuels becoming eligible for financial support. Energy-intensive companies can expect to be just as eligible for government subsidies in the future as farmers who produce plants to make biofuel. Road construction will be intensified, while transportation and agriculture will remain largely exempt from climate protection measures. Most of all, the coalition partners, notwithstanding their effusive commitments to sustainable energy, were unable to agree on future energy policy. Indeed, they expect to take more than a year to come up with a plan detailing exactly where the country will get its electricity in the future.

When it comes to law enforcement, only minor changes were made to the provision allowing online surveillance, a procedure which the FDP sought to eliminate. Thresholds for electronic data retention were likewise merely tweaked rather than fundamentally altered, as the FDP had wanted.

Repeated Insults

In the days after the election, the feeling had been a different one. The leadership of all three coalition parties saw the new government as a perfect chance for a new beginning. Indeed, Westerwelle from the FDP and Seehofer from the CSU even seemed ready to bury the hatchet after a brutal campaign during which they had repeatedly insulted one another.

Yet when they gathered in Berlin to begin hammering out a coalition agreement, they quickly realized that their incompatibilities had not been swept aside on election day. They quickly realized that, while they ran a campaign in which they clearly expressed a preference for governing together, they never actually addressed which policies they might pursue together.

As of early Saturday morning, the results are now clear to all. The CDU/CSU and the FDP are unwilling to commit themselves. The wording in the coalition agreement is as contradictory as the coalition partners' concepts. Negotiations and clashes are inevitable. Which will in turn provide for the kind of mini-compromises that the chancellor prefers: Business as usual in Merkel Country.

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• Part 1: Is Germany's New Government Taking Its Job Seriously?
• Part 2: Shadow Budgets and Sloppy Compromises
• Part 3: Tenuous Compromises