GERMANY: German chancellor Angela Merkel has marked one year in office with a promise to continue economic reforms and a warning to her Christian Democrats (CDU) that there will be "no drift to the left" under her leadership.
A week before its annual conference, the CDU is divided over a proposal to loosen labour market reforms so that the duration of dole payment would be dependent on the number of years worked, rather than the new one-year standard payment.
The proposal has taken on a life of its own and prompted the bemused observation in Berlin that the CDU is heading further left than its grand coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD).
"There is no drift to the left in the CDU," Dr Merkel said yesterday. "We are and remain the party of the centre in Germany."
In a lively Bundestag session, Dr Merkel said the co-operation of CDU and SPD and Germany's economic upswing had left the opposition "Cassandras from a year ago . . . stuttering". She added: "The grand coalition has done more in 12 months than some other governments in years."
The German government will save €11 billion by 2010 after abolishing homebuilder grants and countless billions further after increasing the future retirement age to 67.
From next year, a new "parent's allowance" will give new parents 67 per cent of their income for up to 13 months.
Europe's largest economy has sprung into life with growth at a five-year high, half a million fewer jobless than last year and the lowest level of borrowing since unification in 1990.
But Chancellor Merkel remains in opinion poll freefall: after reaching a popularity high-point of 80 per cent in February, now just 47 per cent of Germans are happy with her work.
Still, she can be satisfied with a relatively positive judgment from the German media yesterday, with most newspapers giving her first year a middling to good rating. The warmest words came from the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine, pointing out that by this stage, Chancellor Schröder had lost three ministers.
"There's no show with her," the paper wrote, praising her style of ruling without the "decrees" of her predecessor. "The SPD women ministers who sat at the cabinet table with Schröder are happier than before. There's no pecking order and no one is given short shrift from colleagues . . . (Merkel) doesn't speak arrogantly or badly of others."
Dubbed the world's most powerful woman by Forbes magazine, Dr Merkel told Bild newspaper yesterday that the office hadn't changed her life or her marriage. "The breakfast I make for us is still the same," she said.
