GERMANY: The former head of the International Monetary Fund, Mr Horst Köhler, was sworn in as Germany's ninth post-war president yesterday with an appeal to Germans to show more courage for long-overdue reforms writes Derek Scally in Berlin
Mr Köhler, a 61-year-old economist and member of the opposition Christian Democrats, quoted a predecessor as president, saying that Germany desperately needed a "jolt" of reform.
"Why can't we manage this jolt? Because we are all waiting until it happens. We all have ideas but we don't fight for their realisation. We all wait," said Mr Köhler after a ceremony in the Reichstag in Berlin.
"Can we afford not to care if one of the motors of Europe keeps spluttering ever more, as some say? I don't think so."
Mr Köhler, one of former chancellor Kohl's closest advisers, served as chief negotiator for the Maastricht treaty and oversaw Germany's post-unification currency union. Though a conservative nominee, he is the first non-politician to become Germany's head of state, and has expressed his wish to be a non-political, unifying figure.
His time outside Germany, as head of the IMF in Washington, was evident yesterday in his shrewd analysis of the causes of the country's problems. Germany's failure to reform, he said, stemmed from the desire of Germans to hang on to what they have - and their fear of failure.
"Setbacks and mistakes are part of human endeavour. It is important not to give up but always to start again on something new.
"The social welfare state today has overextended itself - a bitter but true fact. We need a change of mentality in this country, a new balance between self-responsibility and collective safeguards."
Though the post is largely ceremonial, the German head of state nonetheless has a vital role in driving public discourse, and Mr Köhler's speech yesterday could be welcome wind in the sails of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He has spent the last year battling the conservative opposition, interest groups and a sceptical public to implement far-reaching economic and social reforms, known as Agenda 2010.
The proposed cuts are bitterly opposed by the Social Democrat (SPD) core left-wing and the unions, and come at a time of negligible growth, a 10 per cent unemployment rate and a series of stinging election defeats for the Social Democrats.
Mr Köhler said Agenda 2010 was a step in the right direction but - in a swipe at Mr Schröder's fondness for pragmatic policy U-turns - said more "consequential and continuous" implementation was needed to ensure successful reform. He also had sharp words for his own camp, the opposition conservatives, who have used their majority in the upper house, the Bundesrat, to block reforms and force what Mr Köhler called "compromises where no one can recognise who is responsible for what".
He said the globalised world meant that the German manufacturing giant of yesterday could no longer compete with low-cost economies, but could instead play to other traditional strengths and be number one in research and innovation.
"The official ball for the European Championship was produced in Asia but its costly know-how comes from Germany and secures jobs here," he said.
Mr Köhler, who fled Poland with his family to Germany at the end of the war, said it was his "task and duty" to foster closer ties between Germany and its eastern neighbours, particularly contact among younger people. He called the Franco-German relationship "decisive for the unification of Europe" while urging renewed contact with the US, which he called "the stronghold of liberty", after the strain caused by the Iraq war.
"We Germans should engage ourselves to have a good partnership and a new dialogue with America - self-confident and also capable of criticism among friends, to whom we are bound by common values and interests."