By Andreas Cremer and Leon Mangasarian
June 2 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel is used to grappling over her pro-business agenda with her Social Democratic Party coalition partners. Now she's dealing with pressure from an unexpected source: her own Christian Democratic Union.
The Social Democrats have stymied Merkel for three years, blocking proposals to simplify the tax system and loosen labor laws. As they now push for a universal minimum wage, the CDU is increasingly backing policies opposed by business, including a pension-payment increase.
Driving the political shift is a rising backlash against globalization in the world's largest exporter. The anti- capitalist Left Party is gaining ground in the run-up to September 2009 elections, and even senior members of Merkel's party have taken to criticizing world financial markets.
President Horst Koehler, 65, a Christian Democrat, on May 14 depicted the markets as ``monsters,'' drawing praise from across the political spectrum. Merkel herself condemned some executive pay as ``fantasy compensation'' late last year.
The rhetoric, and the policies behind them, may threaten the economic gains that pulled Germany out of its 1995-2005 doldrums, when its expansion trailed the euro region. Nokia Oyj, Continental AG and other manufacturers already are moving jobs to Eastern Europe, where labor is cheaper.
A `Dangerous Mix'
The moves make for a ``very dangerous mix,'' says Franz Fehrenbach, 58, chief executive officer of Robert Bosch GmbH, the world's largest auto-parts maker. ``It's my concern that this mix will lead us into the next crisis.''
A weakening in Germany's economy would reverberate throughout the euro region. Germany accounts for about one-third of the 15-nation bloc's gross domestic product. It is also the biggest export market for France and Italy, and its growth has helped Europe avoid the worst of a U.S.-led economic slowdown.
``It's important for the direction of the European economy that Germany continue to do well,'' says Robert Barrie, chief European economist at Credit Suisse Group in London. ``If the German economy can continue to hold up, then maybe growth won't be that weak in the euro zone.''
Merkel promised business-friendly policies when her Christian Democrats formed a ``grand coalition'' with the rival Social Democrats in 2005, paying for a payroll tax cut with a sales-tax increase in its first year. Since then, she has shelved proposals to simplify the tax system, make further tax cuts and loosen labor-market laws.
Driving Force
The retreat signals that the Left Party ``has become the driving force in German politics,'' says Manfred Guellner, head of Berlin-based polling company Forsa.
Led by former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine, 64, the Left Party includes former East German communists and renegade Social Democrats. It won seats for the first time in three western state parliaments this year; its success in the city- state of Hamburg helped force Merkel's party into a coalition with the Green Party after losing its majority there.
The Left is benefiting from a perception among many Germans that they have been excluded from the country's economic advance. Economic growth accelerated to the fastest pace in 12 years in the first quarter, and the unemployment rate declined to its lowest in 15 1/2 years. Yet consumer-price inflation has outstripped take-home pay gains every year since 2001, according to the DGB trade union federation.
More Hurt Than Help
A survey for N24 television by the pollster Emnid found that 88 percent of the 1,000 Germans surveyed said they hadn't personally benefited from the economic upswing. Almost 40 percent of Germans say globalization hurts them more than it helps, Forsa's Guellner says.
That's why anti-globalization rhetoric resonates with people like Frank Dressler, 37, a factory worker at Herlitz PBS AG, which makes stationery and office products. Last year, 40 percent of the Berlin-based company's 310.5 million euros ($486 million) in revenue came from international markets, its annual report says.
``The German economy looks good for executives, but not for the working man,'' Dressler says.
Globalization has always been a tough sell in Europe, given its history of state business ownership, employment guarantees and strong unions. When Franz Muentefering was chairman of the Social Democratic Party three years ago, he compared investors seeking short-term gains to the biblical plague of locusts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy this year called for an end to a ``capitalism of lies, of frivolity.''
Waiting for Elections
In Germany, touting globalization is only getting tougher. ``The political caste no longer wants economic reforms because they're looking at the 2009 elections,'' says Sebastian Louis, head of RHL Unternehmensberatung GmbH, a Berlin-based business consultant.
Merkel, 53, won the most applause during her party's annual conference in December when she criticized compensation for departing executives and urged company supervisory boards to set ``reasonable'' pay levels. Outrage followed the Feb. 14 disclosure that prosecutors were investigating whether Deutsche Post AG CEO Klaus Zumwinkel evaded 1 million euros in taxes by transferring money to Liechtenstein. Zumwinkel, who quit Feb. 15, earned 2.96 million euros in 2006, according to the Bonn- based company's annual report.
Fanning the Skepticism
``Sentiment in Germany is now marked by skepticism toward globalization,'' says Juergen Thumann, head of the BDI industry lobby representing Daimler AG and Siemens AG among 107,000 of Germany's biggest companies. ``Politicians are fanning this skepticism.''
Germany's economic turnaround, fueled by companies exploiting the boom in emerging markets, was helped by measures passed under Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Merkel's Social Democratic predecessor. His government cut jobless benefits, reduced income taxes and made it easier to fire workers.
Merkel has failed to deliver on promises to further cut income taxes and rein in medical spending. She also rolled back a Schroeder policy by raising jobless benefits to people older than 50. And she bowed to Social Democratic demands by expanding the scope of a targeted minimum wage to cover workers in more industries than she wanted, and by agreeing to sell less of Deutsche Bahn AG, the state railway than she had proposed.
On April 8, her Cabinet decided to award 20 million retirees an unplanned 1.1 percent increase in pension benefits this year, almost double the budgeted figure, at a cost of 3 billion euros.
`Incomprehensible'
The pension rise was ``a catastrophe in the medium term,'' Norbert Walter, chief economist at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt, said in a May 20 Bloomberg Television interview. ``It's incomprehensible how the bill for one's own splurge can be passed on to the next generation.''
The Left Party's rise has chipped away at support for both Merkel's party and its main coalition partner. Approval for the Christian Democrats fell 1 point to 36 percent while backing for the Social Democrats slid 2 points to 25 percent, the lowest in almost four years, an Infratest poll of 1,000 people published May 16 showed.
The declining popularity of the main parties is leading to new alliances. The CDU's team-up with the Greens in Hamburg is their first partnership at the state level.
Even as both the CDU and SPD rule out partnerships with the Left Party at the national level, they are embracing its policies. Merkel's Cabinet has approved measures to give workers a greater share of corporate profits and to increase child allowances, while the Social Democrats push for universal minimum pay.
Lafontaine, the Left Party leader, took credit for the shift at his party convention May 24. ``We have the wind of history in our sails,'' he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Andreas Cremer in Berlin at acremer@bloomberg.net; Leon Mangasarian in Berlin at at lmangasarian@bloomberg.net
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