Yearbook 2010
 Germany. The Constitutional Court in February rejected a
contentious law on support for long-term unemployed. The
fixed compensation levels that applied after one year's
unemployment, equal to all, were sentenced as arbitrarily
set. The law was part of the multi-year reform package
Agenda 2010, which aimed to reduce government spending. The
government was commissioned to find a new solution.
In the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in May,
Christian Democratic CDU and liberal FDP lost power. The
Social Democratic SPD also backed down somewhat but was able
to form a minority government with the Greens, which has
progressed strongly. Support was promised by the Left Party
Die Linke. The result was seen as a defeat even for the
bourgeois federal government; the election in Germany's most
populous state is usually seen as an important value gauge
for national politics. The bourgeoisie also lost its
majority in the Federal Council, the parliament's first
chamber, where the 16 states are represented.
On May 31, President Horst Köhler resigned unexpectedly,
four years in advance. He was upset over sharp criticism of
him following statements about German participation in
Afghanistan. Köhler had spoken of German export interests as
a motivation for military operations. One month later, CDU
candidate Christian Wulff was elected new president. Wulff
won in a third round of votes over SPD's and Green's
candidate Joachim Gauck. The president, who mainly has
ceremonial duties, is indirectly elected by a special
parliamentary assembly.
A techno party in Duisburg in July ended in tragedy. An
uproar and panic ensued at a long tunnel that was the
entrance to the festival area, and 21 young people perished
in the congestion. Police and organizers were criticized for
lack of security.
An intense integration debate was triggered by an
immigration-critical book in which author Thilo Sarrazin
criticized Muslims for not wanting to integrate. He also
argued about heredity and intelligence that many found
offensive. The criticism prompted Sarrazin to leave his post
on the board of central bank, Bundesbank. The Social
Democrats' party board also discussed excluding him from the
party.
According to
COUNTRYAAH, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement in the
debate that multicultural society has failed and that
immigrants need to integrate better. But she also stressed
that Germany needs immigrants: the country's low birth rates
are lower than death rates, while emigration during the year
was greater than immigration.
The Sarrazine business contributed to continued
difficulties for the SPD, which made a lousy choice a year
earlier. Instead, they had the green wind in their sails and
in an opinion poll in September received support from as
many as SPD: 24 percent of the voters.
The green rise was partly due to the nuclear energy
issue. When the government in September tore up a resolution
on winding up to 2020, the reactions became strong. The
opposition intended both to turn to the Constitutional Court
and try to get a referendum on the issue. Tens of thousands
of people demonstrated in Berlin against the decision. When
nuclear fuel waste was to be transported to the village of
Gorleben for final disposal, the usual protest actions
became unusually extensive. The train delivery was delayed
by several days through blockades and some sabotage. Clashes
occurred between police and protesters.
Merkel's CDU also struggled with falling opinion figures.
One reason was criticism from taxpayers for having to
sponsor "wasteful southern Europeans" in connection with the
crisis in several euro area countries. Pressed by public
opinion, Merkel took a tough stance in the EU and at a
summit in October, among other things, pushed through
demands for a new revision of the EU constitution.
However, the economy in Germany was robust. A savings
package called the largest since the war was adopted in
June, with savings of € 80 billion over four years. At the
same time, growth was the strongest in almost 20 years,
although it slowed to the end of the year. Unemployment then
stood at 7 percent, the lowest figure in 18 years.
In June 2010, the public employees' union organized
demonstrations in Berlin and Stuttgart against the cuts.
CDU politician Christian Wulff was elected German
President in June 2010. In the third round, he got 50.2% of
the votes in the electoral college, while his counterpart,
the independent Joachim Gauck (nominated by the SPD and the
Greens) had to settle for 39.7%. The rest of the voices were
blank. Wulff, however, did not sit for long. In December
2011, it was revealed that as prime minister of Nieder
Saxen, he had received € 500,000 in bribes from a wealthy
businessman. Wulff quickly stated that in future he would
probably be more accurate in his statements of personal
wealth, but then it emerged that he had also put pressure on
the Springer press to postpone the disclosure. He also lost
confidence in his conservative hinterland and had to resign
in February 2012. The Federal Council now chose his
counterpart from 2010, Joachim Gauck as new president. He
was posted to the post in March 2012. Gauck was a great
supporter of commemorating history, and therefore visited
places abroad where the Nazis had committed serious human
rights violations during World War II. In December 2013, his
office announced that he was boycotting the Winter Olympics
in Sochi, Russia in protest of Russian human rights
violations.
After the FDP's best election ever in 2009, it steadily
went downhill for the Liberal Party. In December 2010, party
chairman Guido Westerwelle fired his personal assistant
Helmut Metzner after WikiLeak's leak of North American
embassy telegrams revealed that Metzner regularly served as
a spy for the United States. After the FDP in several
national elections in the spring of 2011 had fallen below
the 5% threshold, Westerwelle resigned as chairman. He was
succeeded in the post by Philipp Rösler. However, he was
unable to save the FDP from the barrier, so in 2013 the
party smoked for the first time since 1949 out of the
Bundestag. In December 2013, Rösler resigned and was
replaced by Christian Lindner.
In 2010, the financial crisis sent Greece to a census. A
significant portion of Greece's debt was in German banks.
Chancellor Merkel was therefore aware that both the euro and
the German banking system were at stake. In May 2010,
therefore, the Federal Day voted for Germany to contribute
22.5 billion. € for a rescue package to Greece. The German
public did not understand the connection and the
contribution was therefore immensely unpopular. In the same
month, Merkel's CDU coalition lost the majority in North
Rhine Westphalia, thus losing the majority in the upper
house. In March 2011, the decline continued as CDU lost
Baden-Würtenberg. The first defeat in the state in 60 years.
In September 2010, the government adopted a controversial
plan to extend the life of the German nuclear reactors. It
thus reversed a 2001 decision to phase out nuclear power
until 2021. However, Germany's changed A-power policy did
not last long. In March 2011, a Tsunami triggered a nuclear
meltdown at the Fukushima A power plant in Japan. The
meltdown led to the government deciding that the German
A-force should be phased out by 2022.
On March 1, 2011, CSU Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu
Guttenberg had to resign from the post. Two months earlier,
it had been revealed that he had copied large parts of his
doctoral dissertation from 2007. Although the government and
the formerly so popular zu Guttenberg himself tried to curb
the scandal, it still cost him his political life. In
October 2009, he had replaced Jung in the post of Minister
of Defense when he was overthrown in the wake of the Kunduz
massacre in Afghanistan
On November 4, 2011, a bank robber shot himself and two
of his friends after a failed bank robbery. It was the start
of a scandal with threads into Germany's neo-Nazi
environment and the intelligence service. The three were
members of the National Socialist Untergrund (National
Socialist Underground), which since 2000 had killed 8
Turkish businessmen, 1 Greek and 1 German politician,
carried out bomb attacks and carried out 14 bank robberies.
Over the following weeks, a few surviving members of the
group were arrested. However, during the spring of 2012, it
emerged that the German intelligence (Vervassungsschutz) had
an excellent knowledge of the group. In fact,
Vervassungsschutz had had members infiltrated into the group
for several years. The scandal got even bigger when it was
revealed that the Vervassungsschutz on 12. November had
tried to cover the connection by disrupting all information
about the collaboration. On July 2, 2012, the chief of the
Vervassungsschutz, Heinz Fromm had to resign. The scandal
reaffirmed the left's claim over several years that the
intelligence service was closely linked to the right wing,
which allowed it to commit serious crimes when the
intelligence service could simply use it against the left.
The case came to court in 2016. (The neo-Nazi murder trial
revealing Germany's darkest secrets, Guardian 15/12
2016).
In 2009, the German economy shrank by 5%, but preliminary
figures from January 2011 showed that the economy had grown
by 3.6% in 2010. It was primarily exports that had driven
growth. However, the economy slowed down again in 2011.
In December 2011, Chancellor Merkel explains to the
Bundestag that Germany is supporting the formation of a
European banking union as a means of solving the ongoing
financial crisis. She declares her judgment as a continuing
opponent of the European Central Bank issuing its own
government bonds.
In August 2012, the Constitutional Court grants the
German military the right to use weapons in Germany in the
event of an "catastrophic scale" attack. The military must
not, however, respond to demonstrations. Sharp restrictions
were written into the Constitution after the World War II
crimes.
In September, the Constitutional Court rejected calls to
block the European Stability Mechanism and the European
Banking Union. At the same time, however, it places a
ceiling on Germany's contribution to the bank packages,
which can only be bypassed by a majority in the Bundestag.
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