FDP on collision course with Merkel over pace of reform

GERMANY’S Free Democrats (FDP), junior partners in the Berlin government, have vowed to crank up the pace of their reform plans, setting them on a collision course with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

After just 100 days in power, the luckless FDP has shed nearly six points in opinion polls, forcing party leaders to go on the offensive, promising reforms they had agreed to postpone.

"I have the patience of an angel," said party leader Guido Westerwelle of his new coalition partner, the Christian Democrats (CDU), "but the FDP can do things differently, too." Mr Westerwelle kept to himself just what he plans to do differently, instead using an interview with Der Spiegelto vent his frustration at an inability to transform into real political clout a 14.6 per cent result in last September's election.

The record result for the party returned the FDP to power after 11 years and swung a second term for chancellor Merkel.

But FDP hopes that a grateful Dr Merkel would, in return, wave through their drastic reform plans for Germany’s creaking tax and health systems have so far proven premature.

The FDP has yet to present financing for its proposals which critics say would cost €54 billion in lost tax takings and over €30 billion in extra health spending – doubling at a stroke this year’s extra borrowing to an eye-watering €160 billion.

Instead Dr Merkel has long-fingered the FDP’s plans, blaming weak tax returns and concerns of CDU grassroots that are broader than the FDP’s liberal clientele.

After weeks of political sniping, Mr Westerwelle and Dr Merkel agreed, over a lunch of steak tartare, to postpone talk of reforms until later in the year.

The FDP might not be able to wait that long. New polls show that conservative CDU voters who defected to the FDP in September in support of its radical reform plans are now drifting away again in frustration.

Acknowledging that the party has landed with a bump with just 8 per cent support, FDP general secretary Christian Lindner promised to “implement party policies quicker than planned”.

But with support in free-fall, he declined to say how his party plans to pressure Dr Merkel and the CDU into action.

Meanwhile German gay and lesbian groups have defended Mr Westerwelle, the country's first openly gay foreign minister, after readers of FHMmagazine placed him second in a poll of "Germany's least sexy women".