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It almost sounds like it used to. The taxes - too high. Social security contributions - too. And the energy prices even more. Oh, too much bureaucracy. What the Germans needed was once again a true market economy. Unlike the old Chancellor.
Something like that sounded before the Leipzig party congress this weekend from leading circles of the last Fast-noch-Volkspartei. Whether by Saxony's prime minister Michael Kretschmer or, of course, the good old Friedrich Merz. From the Nostalgia Economic Council of the CDU anyway. And at the same time, according to Kretschmer, the Union should take "a role model" at a previous party congress in the same place.
This refers to the - in friends of free-market dreams legendary - party congress in this Leipzig in 2003. Since Angela Merkel had set to a kind of copy of the iron Margaret Thatcher - and "the most radical program of party history" ("Rheinische Post") decide.
It is not very clear what is good for 2003 as a real political example of success. It is even possible that what the Union was celebrating as an economic profile at that time would draw less today than it already did. And that such a CDU after Merkel would soon really social-democratize. In polls.
Rhomb instead of Rabiat program
At that time - in the middle of Germany's economic crisis and shortly after Gerhard Schröder's Agenda 2010 speech - Merkel emerged as a much more consistent reformer of the welfare state. At the club meeting, Friedrich Merz's proposal for a radically new three-stage tax system became part of the program. Just as the introduction of a capitation, ie the abolition of solidarity health insurance. And the pension at 67.
The little catch: Merkel has never implemented the rabiat program, but switched to lozenge and far-reaching reform stop, as was clear in the election in 2005 that the iron rhetoric after three years of Schröder sweat and tears in the country rather dissuasive.
Despite Schröder's crash, Merkel barely missed out on the Leipzig program in September 2005, but was not elected chancellor; and had to do GroKo instead. What enabled her in those meanwhile much more legendary readiness to adapt her own attitude in such cases regularly to the national mood values.
For example, in late 2005, Merkel allowed exceptions to the Stability Pact in Brussels in order not to reduce the government deficit with a crowbar - after complaining in Leipzig about the exceptions her predecessor once allowed. But there was a spending package to get the economy going first.
A little pension
Great reforms? Och, nö. Under the real Merkel there was until today neither the radical tax reform nor the solidarity health insurance. Only the pension at 67 came back at some point - in agreement with the scolded Sozis - with a number of corrections. Keyword pension with 63 for long-term painter. Or mother's pension.
Hard to prove what would have happened if Merkel had stuck to the vowed economic profile. The economy, too, has weathered the Chancellor's economic profile quite well - and has long since seen the longest upswing. Without any radical whatsoever.
There is some evidence that such a thing would be even less effective today than it would have done then. If the German economy started to weaken so abruptly in 2019, then not seriously, because there is too much bureaucracy or taxes overnight. Or too little incentive to work. There is so much work going on than never. Then it's more likely to be due to the confusion of Donald Trump, our friends from Brexit Island - or the neglect of the auto industry.
Revival of the market blabber?
If something is lacking, it is professionals who are not made to lower taxes or loosen regulations; or investments in the infrastructure that have failed to exist for years, as even the Federal Association of German Industry impressively criticizes; or more flexible budget rules that could allow more public investment in the long run.
Whether a revival of the Marktplunderer still fits into the time, can be doubted anyway. Even the more orthodox among the professors in the Sachverständigenrat now admit that it makes no sense in difficult times to stick to the black zero. Contrary to what the economically slightly erroneous Economic Council of the CDU, unimpressed by the state of the economy, does.
In the meantime, there is consensus (even now) in the United States and Britain, once considered marketably exemplary, that too much market liberal zeal has contributed to the drastic divergence between rich and poor. Finally, with clutter against bureaucracy and tax burdens, the climate crisis will no longer be averted.
It speaks one or the other also that all this is similar in the German people today. In surveys, 80 percent of people say privatization of government services has gone too far. And that with us the long practiced social compensation does not work anymore. Or that the inequality of income and wealth increasingly endangers the cohesion of the population. To ignore such popular opinion would not necessarily be useful for a party that would like to remain a popular party.
Sure, Angela Merkel has missed a lot to do. What she should not catch up, however, is yet to become a late copy of Thatcher. Or to launch a revival of Leipzig in 2003.
The opposite of market radical
Repeating the experiment would meet Volksnerv in about as good a place today as Messi hit the stadium roof in the penalty spot. Missed was the chance to inspire the country with a really big investment initiative, of which everyone would have something: whether better mobile phone reception, a great rail network or chic schools. Rather the opposite of market radical - rather the correction of still too much market.
If, after 14 years of Merkel's chancellorship, the Union fluctuates between gentle corrections akk to the AKK and return to something that has never existed in practice, this conveys the sovereignty and analytical rigor that we actually knew from the SPD in recent years.
And we know what happened to him.
