Focus on Germany London Office The Chandlery Office 609 50 Westminster Bridge Road GB London SE1 7QY Tel 00 44 20 77 21 87 45 Fax 00 44 20 77 21 87 46 www.feslondon.org.uk June 2006 Slaving away in the Engine Room The SPD in the Grand Coalition Ernst Hillebrand To date, the Grand Coalition has been good only to a limited extent for the SPD. In sur­veys carried out at the end of May the party garnered only 28% of voter support, 6% less than its result in the September 2005 general election. It is true that the CDU also received a little less support in the surveys than in the election, but the German con­servative party can still claim 34% of the voters. After a period of eight months in government together, the SPD has dropped from one percentage point difference to the CDU on election night to 6% today. Much of this development is primarily con­nected with the change in the public per­ception of Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a surprisingly short time and with astonishing resolution the German public seems to have decided to take this first female chan­cellor on board and to like her: her popular­ity rating stands at 77%, a very high level and well beyond that of any other federal minister and far in front of the SPD Deputy Chancellor Franz Müntefering. Frau Merkel managed to capitalise on two key factors: - Firstly, she has strongly concentrated in the past few months on foreign affairs ­always a field which can win high profile and prestige- and she has cut a rela­tively good figure on her first visits to Washington, Moscow, Beijing and some of the European countries. - Secondly, she has established a new consultative and pragmatic style in day­to-day parliamentary and cabinet busi­ness. The majority of Germans appear to find this approach congenial and appeal­ing, following on as it does from the seven-year-long period of Red-Green government, in which politics on all sides often appeared to be staged as a per­manent public ego-trip. The upcoming agenda The decline in support for both parties re­vealed by the survey does however point to the fact that the population is beginning to expect some tangible results from the gov­ernment. The honeymoon seems over. Now the government has to prove that it can ful­fill the public's unspoken expectations of the Grand Coalition and execute the necessary reforms in consensus and a socially bal­anced form. Ernst Hillebrand is Director of FES London