Policy evolution

Eight years ago in Leipzig, the German Christian Democrats, under their new party chairman Angela Merkel, began to follow a distinctly neoliberal path. Under the party's new policy, the economy was to be deregulated and businesses relieved of the burden of contributing to the social welfare system.

Now, as the CDU met once more in Leipzig, the number of unemployed has dropped by two million. Yet millions of jobs have been created which are so poorly paid that employees are unable to make ends meet without the help of social benefits.

Eight years ago, calls for a minimum wage would have been dismissed out of hand by Christian Democrats. But now Karl-Josef Laumann, the head of the Christian Democratic Labor Association, has been hailed for advocating just that. His passionate arguments in favor of a minimum wage were met with applause at the 2011 party conference which ended with party members adopting the proposal.

Appeasing party members

Yet the CDU has not officially advocated a minimum wage. It wants to steer clear of imposing the national fixed rate, fixed by parliament, which the opposition has called for. The Christian Democrats are instead discussing what they call a "base pay level" which will be set by a commission of trade unions and employers.

Parliament will only intervene to ensure that this base pay level is binding for all companies except for those in industries or regions which already have their own minimum wage fixed by their own agreements between union and employer. This is in line with the Christian Democratic principle of "subsidiarity" whereby the government only acts when other institutions are not able to do so.

The CDU leadership originally planned tougher guidelines on the base pay level. Concerns that this would stir conflict at the party conference, however, meant that the terms were watered down at the last minute. The latest proposals have soothed the business wing of the CDU while also fully satisfying the labor wing.

Breaking with tradition

In the past year and a half Merkel has led her party through some dramatic policy changes. In the summer of 2010 the government decided to do away with compulsory military service, which until then was at the heart of Christian Democrat defense policy.

Six months later, Merkel surprised her party with a decision to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese Fukushima disaster. For decades the CDU had advocated nuclear power, against all criticism, as a safe and environmentally friendly source of energy.

The controversy within the CDU over these issues led the party leadership to try to avoid overwhelming the party with further policy reform.

That applied also to education policy, where Christian Democrats had always stood up for Germany's three-tier school system, defending it not only against criticism from the opposition Social Democrats and Greens, but also from their coalition partners, the liberal FDP. The system separates students into three different schools depending on their ability.

But then the party leaders adopted a new policy to merge the lower and middle schools to combat declining enrollments in mainly rural regions.

Moderate school policy changes

These latest policy changes left Angela Merkel facing criticism at regional party conferences across the country in recent months. Local party branches presented over 1700 amendments to the education policy proposals at the conference - the highest number of amendments in the history of the CDU. The leadership responded by significantly altering them.

The merger of the two secondary school tiers was merely recommended as an option, if parents wanted it. But what really interests the average CDU member is the academic top tier, the Gymnasium. The opposition would like to merge that as well, and the premier of Lower Saxony, David McAllister, drew a line in the sand clearly when he warned, "Keep your fingers off the Gymnasium, or there'll be trouble."

So at least here there was clear blue water between the CDU and the others, which meant that the party had another hero that it could cheer to the rafters. And the party leader, Angela Merkel, left satisfied that she had found support for another policy change in the ever changing face of the CDU.

Autor: Peter Stützle / ccp
Editor: Michael Lawton