Hot Air in Berlin

There was one question which journalists kept on asking, but which Edmund Stoiber clearly didn’t want to hear: "Could you be more exact?"

But Stoiber avoided going into detail as he presented the joint Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union's party platform on Monday. He even answered one journalist’s request for more depth by simply saying "No".

Indeed, the Union's 74-page platform, titled "Efficiency and Security, Time for Deeds" is more than vague, especially on financial matters.

A central plank in the election manifesto is the "3x40" plank: Lowering the state’s share of gross domestic product to under 40 per cent, reducing the top tax rate to under 40 per cent and "using all possible measures to successively lower employers’ and workers’ social social insurance contributions to under 40 per cent" of monthly salary.

In order to afford such tax cuts, Stoiber said he was banking on the economic turaround experts have been predicting. One thing is clear, with Germany struggling to pull out of recession and unemployment high, there is a big question mark over Germany’s ability to fund tax cuts from a strapped budget.

"We must move step by step. It would be unbearable for any party to promise the stars in the sky at this stage" CDU General Secretary Laurenz Meyer (photo) told German television after the platform presentation. "The people know when it comes to jobs and growth there is no golden way, there are many ways of doing it".

As Stoiber hopes his economic credentials as premier of a booming German state will help him oust Chancellor Schröder out of power, industry and employers – traditional conservative supporters - are already wary and Stoiber’s lack of clarity on economic reform.

And according to a recent poll, only a third of Germans think that Stoiber can help the German economy to pick up.

"So far it is impossible to see a clear position", Dieter Hundt, head of the German employers’ association, told the German daily Die Welt. German Chambers of Commerce leader Ludwig Georg Braun told the same newspaper it was hard to tell the two parties apart.

Too much, with too little

According to the SPD an estimated 67 billion euros would be needed to finance the Union’s programme.

The Conservatives rejected earlier accusations that they were pushing for too much reform, but didn’t have the means to fund it, saying that considering the state of public finances, the platform had to be "ambitious" yet "honest". CDU leader Angela Merkel said the Union was not making "countless promises" but had compiled "a genuine plan for the future".

Apart from proposals for tax relief, the platform states "the drastic underfunding of Germany’s military must be corrected" and said it would raise benefits for families with children in a new "family benefit scheme," to be introduced in 2004.

The platform also calls for a "campaign for mid-sized companies for eastern Germany" to be funded from privatizing federal government assets. But Stoiber gave no time frame for the Unions’ budgetary policy to "reduce new debt".

Sharp critiscm

The Social Democrats harshly criticised the platform, saying it only expressed Stoiber’s missing strength and missing profile.

Underlining their criticism, the SPD added the "first photo of the Union’s party platform" on their new website nichtregierungsfähig.de (not worthy of governing.de) - a huge air bubble.