"It's the Jobs, Stupid!"

With more than four million unemployed and a stagnating economy, Germany's biggest parties are focusing on measures to spur growth and get people off the dole in the current election campaign.

As Germany counts the days to the federal elections on September 22, the country's six major political parties are busy stumping with their campaign platforms in an effort to win over undecided and swing voters.

Three major themes will be at the center of almost all every party platforms this year: the economy, employment and the social insurance system. Similar to the words of former US president Bill Clinton who once told a senior advisor: "It's the economy, stupid!", German politicians have adopted the economy as the main issue in their election campaigns. However, this year’s slogan is slightly different to Clinton's relatively moderate one ten years before. Today its more like "Jobs, jobs, jobs!"

The SPD

One of the strongest features in this year’s election campaign, is the image of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as protector of the public purse, with Finance Minister Hans Eichel as its strict treasurer. "We've abandoned the path of becoming a nation of debt and have made that our trademark," the party's election platform states. The party is pledging to submit a balanced budget to parliament by 2006. Through "solid financial policy," the Social Democrats believe they can keep consumer prices stable, boost economic growth and create new jobs.

In order to reduce German unemployment – at current more than four million - the SPD is seeking to make low-pay jobs more attractive to employees and more affordable for employers. The government wants to subsidize jobs with below-average low wages with payments between 325 and 800 euro in order to encourage the unemployed to take on what would otherwise be possibly unprofitable jobs.

The SPD has also pledged special federal job creation aid for Germany’s eastern states, where unemployment is at a staggering 18 per cent. The SPD has said it will fund the new programs by setting "new priorities" and offering "more focused" social insurance benefits to people living in Germany. Party strategists also hope to stretch the existing budget by merging the country's unemployment and social welfare systems.

Families also play a central role in the Social Democrats' party platform. The party wants to introduce incremental increases of the German Kindergeld, or child allowance, currently paid to families with children from the current 154 euro a month to 200 euro a month. In the wake of criticism over Germany's dismal performance in the international PISA schools comparison study, the party also also wants to introduce more all-day schools across the country and initiate additional school reform initiatives. It is prepared to spend 4 billion euro over the next four years to fulfill these ideas.

The SPD has also proposed reducing tax advantages currently enjoyed by married couples, instead providing them to single parents. The party also wants to create programs encouraging companies to make more apprenticeships and training programs available, which are required in many vocations before a young person can be given a permanent job.

CDU/CSU

For the first time in their 50-year history, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have come together to create a joint election platform. Citing the “40” as its magic September 22 number, the so-called Union bloc's priority is to attract a minimum of 40 per cent of voters and to cut to below 40 per cent of the highest tax rate, employment side costs for businesses and the country's social insurance expenditures as well as the ratio of government expenditures to gross national product.

Like the SPD, the Union bloc also has its own proposal for the low-wage sector. It wants to increase the current combination of low wages and subsidies from 325 euro a month to 400. Like the SPD, the Union says combination-wage programs can be made possible by reducing government contributions to other social insurance programs, and that doing so will create new jobs.

The Union also says it will address the beleaguered eastern German economy with its own revitalization program. If elected in September, the parties are proposing new laws that would accelerate investment in the sinking construction industry, make it easier for small firms to grow and do a better job of protecting industry in the East.

The Union also proposes increasing the budget of the Bundeswehr, Germany's army. It says the resource-strapped army, which has been stretched thin with close to 10,000 soldiers currently serving on foreign missions, is in bad need of more money in order to be capable of meeting its international defense obligations under NATO and the United Nations.

The Union differentiates itself from the current Social Democrat and Greens-led government in three other key areas: it wants to amend laws currently on the books ordering the closure of all of Germany's nuclear power plants, increases in the country's environment tax and the recently passed immigration law, which was approved under controversial circumstances in the country's higher legislative chamber and now faces a Federal Constitutional Court challenge.

The Greens

In March, Germany’s powerful left-wing party, the Greens, voted to amend the uncompromising anti-war plank that had long topped its list of party principles. However, by this time the party had already made the shift in practice - it was Green leader Joschka Fischer and his party who co-authorized the first use of military force in Germany’s post-War history, committing troops to NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.

In 2001 there followed the second authorization of the deployment of troops abroad, namely to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, and in 2001 the third: 3,900 soldiers for Operation Enduring Freedom in the US-led "war on terror". The party also turned its back on radical pacifism and accepted the military presence of the United States in Europe. But it did so with an important condition: "The further reduction of our military potential must remain our goal."

This year, the party has set a goal of winning at least eight per cent of voters. Its election platform focuses on the environment, proposals to increase consumer protection and equality. The Greens also want to combine the country's unemployment and social welfare benefits in order to create a unified safety net for all Germans. A special program within that infrastructure would be aimed at keeping families with children and, especially, single parents from slipping beneath the poverty level. As it has in previous elections, the Green Party is also demanding a "society free of gender discrimination."

The Free Democrats

The Free Democratic Party (FDP) has positioned itself as the business-friendly party of tax cuts. One of its chief goals is to simplify Germany's Byzantine tax-filing procedure and replace it with a one-page filing form similar to the 1040EZ form which is used in the United States. The party also wants to cut tax rates to 15, 25 or 35 per cent based on income.

Other parties have dismissed the FDP's lofty tax-cut pledges as implausible. "Ideas like that will sort themselves out very quickly," said Lothar Späth, the former CEO of eastern German success story JenaOptik, now a senior political advisor to Bavarian Premier and opposition chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber.

The Free Democrats are setting their sights on the middle class with campaign slogans like "Job Machine No. 1" and calls for leaner government. Education is another central theme in the FDP’s party platform. The Free Democrats want to spur greater competition in the higher education sector by giving universities and technical colleges greater autonomy.

In order to fuel job growth, the FDP wants to liberalize the country's employment termination laws in order to make firing and, it hopes, hiring easier for the small-sized businesses it has recognized as the key to growth. Additionally, it wants to privatize the government's current network of job placement agencies in order to create competition and increase efficiency.

The Party of Democratic Socialism

The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor party to East Germany's communist regime, has established itself as a party of social justice and champion for the eastern German states.

Now, the party has extended its ideals to include the radical pacifist position recently abandoned by the Green Party and is calling itself the "peace and anti-war party." In that vein, it is calling for the dissolution of NATO, instead placing responsibility for international security under the control of the United Nations. It also wants to reduce the German army from the current 340,000 to 100,000 soldiers and prohibit the sale of German weapons to other countries.

As part of its family policy platform, the PDS wants to raise the child allowance to 210 euro per child per month and to make daycare a legal right for all children up to the age of 14.