Agenda 2010 - Reaction To The Changes

Reaction To The Changes

Politicians, industrial leaders, trade unions, media and population alike justifiably consider the Agenda 2010, especially the Hartz IV law, as the largest cut into the German system of social security since World War II.

While industrial leaders and both the conservative and economically liberal parliamentary parties such as the CDU, the CSU, and the FDP strongly supported Agenda 2010 as it implemented their long-time demands, there was a strong upheaval in Schröder's own social democratic party. After Schröder threatened to resign (with no obvious successor as Chancellor) if the changes were blocked in his party since they were so vital to his government's policy, he received an inner-party 80% vote of approval as well as a 90% approval from his coalition partner, the Greens. However, Schröder had won the 2002 federal election with, among other things, the promise not to cut into the social security system. In a reaction to the policies declared and the measures taken, about 100,000 members of Schröder's SPD left the party, but the more prominent left-wing politicians stayed on. Although the changes eventually went through, after devastating opinion polls Gerhard Schröder resigned as party chairman (not as Chancellor) in February 2004 to give way to the more popular Franz Müntefering.

This development left the PDS (with only 2 out of the 603 members of the federal parliament) as the only outspoken opponent to the Agenda 2010 policies although their course was somewhat inconsistent. In the Länder of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin, where there are SPD-PDS-coalitions (and later SPD-Die Linke coalitions), PDS/Die Linke ministers are actively implementing the Agenda 2010 laws.

The German Trade Union Federation (DGB), the most influential group outside parliament and historically interwoven with the SPD, massively stepped up their discourse against Agenda 2010, especially prior to the Hartz IV law in July 2004, but the rumble subsided quickly after a summit meeting with Schröder in August 2004. The trade unions suffered from a lot of attrition in that process as their members defected in droves either because the unions' attitude was perceived as too lenient or as too strongly opposed. There were no strikes against Agenda 2010 as the German constitution prohibits politically motivated strikes, but some demonstrations at least were organized and supported by the unions. The biggest demonstrations, held in Cologne, Berlin and Stuttgart on April 3, 2004 brought together some 500,000 people.

In December 2003, the Bundesrat, dominated by the opposition CDU party, blocked some of the reforms on political grounds until several compromises were reached, many of which put a particularly painful twist - for those affected, for example the unemployed or the ill - on the measures taken.

Dissatisfaction with Agenda 2010, and in particular with Hartz IV, lead to thousands of people protesting in the streets of Berlin, Leipzig and other big cities particularly in eastern, but also western Germany over the summer of 2004 (see Monday demonstrations, 2004).

Dissent with the Agenda 2010 has also promoted the foundation of a new political party, the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) by long-term SPD members and union activists. The WASG is squarely against the measures taken in the Agenda 2010 process and ran in the 2005 North Rhine-Westphalia state election, where it gained 2.2% of the votes, against what it considers "the neoliberal consensus" displayed by the governing centre-left political parties and the more conservative opposition alike.