Confidence Man II

A train wreck between Chancellor Schröder and the left wing of his party is scheduled for June 1

What a gorgeous ceremony. There they were, the leaders of old and new Europe, defined not by a renegade US Secretary of Defense but by that ever-evolving, shape-shifting body, the European Union. They stood together in Athens among the picturesque ruins of the world's first democracy and signed a piece of paper that officially widens the EU's ranks by ten members for a total of 25 by next May. Then they scampered off to meetings of various clusters within the new EU to heal rifts and discuss crises. Yes, they talked about Iraq, but they also fretted over internal balances of power, and of course, the ailing economy. And Europe's sickest economy is also its biggest.

With unemployment set to soar to 4.5 million next year and growth stagnating -- Germany's economy is actually expected to shrink slightly in the second quarter of this year -- Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has introduced a package of reforms he calls Agenda 2010. Unemployment benefits are to be cut, employees' rights during this cycle of global economic doldrums are to be cut, pensions, health coverage, you name it. Cut. The Agenda is, in short, the beginning of the dismantling of the welfare state in the classic European sense of the term, one built on Germany's own postwar "economic miracle" and the all but continent-wide implementation of the social democratic model in the 1970s. Up to now, with the exception of a "modernization" drive in 1999, Germany has been one of the last hold-outs to stand against the worldwide wave of 1990s neoliberal reform. No more.

But one thing Agenda 2010 is not is news. Schröder unveiled the program over a month ago, but back in mid-March, the headlines were dominated by Iraq. This week, with the war in its less attention-grabbing "mopping up" phase, minds are returning to domestic matters. And Schröder finds himself facing a revolt from the left-wing of his Social Democratic Party (SPD).

An internal anti-Agenda 2010 petition began making the rounds and the lefties demanded a special congress to give a party-wide thumbs up or down on the program. At first, Schröder rejected the idea, but as pressure mounted, he agreed: Ok, we'll have the meeting, make it June 1, but those thumbs will be bound to a vote of confidence in my party leadership.

Sigmar Gabriel, who heads the SPD in Schröder's home state of Lower Saxony (and headed the state as well until he was swept out of office by a tsunami of anti-SPD sentiment, aroused, primarily, by the state of the economy (see The Scope of the Crisis), pretty well sums up the pox-on-both-your-houses frustration felt by many in the SPD, and for that matter, Germany in an interview for this week's Bild am Sonntag:

"Two trains are racing head-on towards each other: One of them's reducing the necessary substantive discussion once again to a vote of confidence for the chancellor. [He's done this before; see Confidence Man.] The party can be disciplined this way but not motivated to action. And the so-called left-wing of the party is blockading against proposals for reform without offering a realistic alternative. That road leads to landing in the opposition."

Elsewhere

"Books, books, always books! I just can't imagine Adolf without books." That's August Kubizek, friend to Hitler during their teens, as quoted by Timothy W. Ryback in The Atlantic Monthly on the revealing collection of one of the world's most notorious bookworms.

An amusing front door to archINFORM, an international architecture database (note: you'll want to try out both options).