Germany: Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has conceded the European elections were a slap in the face for his ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its reform policies, but insisted there is no alternative to his government's reforms.
Official results released yesterday showed the SPD took just 21.5 per cent of the vote, down from 30 per cent in the 1999 election and its worst result since the second World War, while the Christian Democrats (CDU) captured 44.5 per cent.
"There's no quibbling the bitterness of this defeat. But we have to continue these policies because they are objectively necessary," Mr Schröder said. "I can only continue this politics, I only want to continue this politics."
Mr Schröder has little choice but to continue with the economic reforms and hope the economy picks up as another U-turn at this stage could be disastrous. The question now is how much reform or how little: whether to introduce new, painful reforms, seen as unlikely, or to continue tinkering with the reforms already in progress and try to explain them better.
The chancellor has already held strategy talks with Mr Franz Münterfering, who replaced him earlier this year as SPD leader. The election debacle has been interpreted as failure of their strategy to split the leadership of the government and party, in the hope of improving the fortunes of both.
Government officials spent most of yesterday morning spinning the election as one in a series of defeats for European governments, yet nowhere did the slap sound as loud as in Berlin. Mr Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian leader who narrowly lost out on becoming chancellor in 2002, used every interview to point out that the election result gave the German government the support of just a third of voters.
Last week it emerged that Mr Stoiber had rejected overtures from Mr Schröder and President Jacques Chirac of France to be the next European Commission president. He apparently still hopes to become the next German chancellor.
The opposition conservatives are optimistic that the fortunes of the government will continue to slide, and some believe their moment could come in next May's state elections in North-Rhine Westphalia, the Ruhr state which is home to nearly 18 million, or one in five Germans.
It's generally agreed that an SPD defeat there would be the end of the road for Mr Schröder, and possibly for the government.
The Green Party came out in support of its troubled senior coalition partner yesterday, despite being the undoubted success story of the European elections in Germany. Party leaders were jubilant at nearly doubling the party's support to 12 per cent, but made clear they would not be using the results to make any further demands at the cabinet table "I don't see that the government is weakened," said Mr Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister and leading Green Party member. "We have a mandate until 2006."
