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The Week in Germany: Politics July 29, 2005 Pro-business FDP promises sweeping reforms in platform Germany's pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) have pledged to make Europe's largest economy leaner and more competitive in a pull-no-punches election program that party leaders called "courageous."
FDP chief Guido Westerwelle unveiled the 80-page manifesto in Berlin on Monday, less than two months before general elections that could see the party enter government as the junior partner in a center-right coalition. It calls for a far-reaching overhaul of Germany's unemployment benefit system, including scrapping the massive federal employment agency, and a radical simplification of the country's complex tax code. Under the plan, the introduction of a three-tiered tax system purged of special allowances and loopholes would pay for tax cuts of up to 17bn Eur ($23bn), said Westerwelle. Other proposals include the full privatization of Germany's publicly-financed health care system and measures to loosen strict rules on hiring and firing. Westerwelle said the FDP strongly opposes an increase in the sales tax, which the party's most likely coalition partner, the larger center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party CSU, has called for in its campaign program.
That stance — and the rest of the FDP's sweeping reform agenda — has won enthusiastic praise from German business leaders who have called for across-the-board economic reforms to boost jobs and growth. "This is what Germany needs," said the leader of the powerful BDI industry association, Juergen Thumann. Germany's leading newspapers meanwhile delivered a mixed verdict on the program, with the left-leaning Frankfurter Rundschau calling the platform a "disingenuous numbers game" but Leipzig's Volkszeitung praising it as a "true election alternative." Most agreed, however, that the program marked a watershed moment for a party that has recently sought to embrace a more sober tone after a widely-ridiculed bid to reinvent itself as Germany's "fun party" under the young leadership of Westerwelle. There was also agreement that the program is unlikely to help the party, which polls at around 7%, to transcend its niche appeal. The program "contains a whole grab-bag of reforms that will never be realized," wrote Munich's center-left daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "But it is still in many respects more honest than the program presented to voters by the CDU/CSU. "In their long list, the liberals say precisely what would be cut if they were to govern. "Seen purely economically, it all sounds perfectly good," the paper concluded. "But there is more to the fight for votes than pure economics." Links:
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