The political harm to Merz and his conservatives seems substantial. Two-thirds of Germans oppose the proposal of his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to make it tougher to work part-time, in accordance with Germany’s benchmark ARD-DeutschlandTrend survey.
Extra consequentially for Merz, his conservatives are dropping factors on their core difficulty: the financial system. Solely 31 p.c of Germans surveyed mentioned they belief the chancellor’s conservatives to enhance the financial system. That also beats different events, however is 6 proportion factors lower than final yr — tying the conservatives’ lowest financial system ranking on report.
So it got here as no shock, earlier this month, when Merz’s social gathering struck the phrase “part-time way of life” from the proposal on rising work hours to be thought of at a CDU social gathering convention in late February.
Greece as a mannequin?
Topping the record of probably the most hours labored within the EU is Greece, a rustic whose individuals many German conservatives scorned as lazy in the course of the European debt disaster over a decade in the past. Merz now holds up Greece as one thing of a mannequin, though Germany’s labor productiveness stays far larger.
Throughout a go to by conservative Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Berlin final yr, Merz praised Athens for deregulating its labor market, enabling a six-day workweek. “I like to recommend that everybody in Germany who thinks it’s horrible and unreasonable to work 40 hours per week … check out Greece,” Merz mentioned alongside Mitsotakis. “We are able to definitely be taught one thing from Greece on this regard.”
However given fierce German resistance to such proposals — and the actual fact Merz governs in coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Get together (SPD), which is protecting of present labor-market laws — the chancellor has few rapid treatments for Germany’s persistent expert labor scarcity and stagnating productiveness.
