In view of the elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia scheduled for the first half of May, the allies of the Christian-liberal coalition are trying to clean up their image, strengthening the profile of the social conservative party - the CDU/CSU – and from the liberal party – the FDP. However, these movements within the majority are dangerously sharpening the level of confrontation. In particular, the plans to introduce a new subsidy of around 100-150 euros per month for those parents who decide to raise their children at home without sending them to kindergarten (Betreuungsgeld) clash with the balanced budget objectives of the Ministry of Finance.
For a long time, Christian Democracy has resisted the Liberal Party's plans to lower the tax burden, branding them as unfinanceable. However, now that it is a question of adding a new chapter of expenditure, the CDU/CSU no longer seems to have the same doubts. Indeed, the roles seem to have swapped, with the liberals playing the strict guardians of public accounts and the Christian Democrats willing to accept a moderate slowdown in the work of fiscal consolidation. In recent days it was Mrs Merkel herself who strongly underlined the goodness of the provision, which has always been a workhorse of the Christian Socialists of Bavaria, the Land in which the vote will take place in the autumn of 2013.
And so, after the distinctions of the Bundesbank, which at the end of March had defined the goal of eliminating the deficit in 2016 as not exactly ambitious, yesterday the Association of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) also went on the attack on the new Mrs. Merkel's soft line on rehabilitation. In a letter published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the president of the association, Hans-Heinrich Driftmann, formally asked the Chancellor to show consistency, by applying the same austerity measures in Germany that are required of other Eurozone countries. The German state will have to save money, Driftmann explained, by acting above all on the expenditure side and not by increasing taxes: "Good politics is not made up of large-scale subsidies, subsidies or incentives", reads the letter. Letter whose content was also made this morning by Dieter Hundt, president of one of the two German Confindustrie, the Bda, who defined the idea of approving the Betreuungsgeld as absurd, as it cannot be financed at present. According to experts, the proposal would cost around 7 billion euros a year.
In the last few hours the liberals seem to have partially changed their mind, agreeing with Mrs Merkel for the introduction of the contribution, but excluding from the list of her recipients those who already receive the Hartz IV subsidy, i.e. long-term unemployed and workers with very low income . An idea that provoked an immediate outcry from the red-green opposition, which sees in the new subsidy a form of welfare for the middle-upper class.
