Quotas For Women On Company Boards

Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU Union and the social democrat SPD are still working towards a coalition contract. According to Sueddeutsche, they have come closer to a agreement on quotas for women for supervisory (Aufsichtsrat) and management boards (Vorstand) of the largest German companies.

What's Happening In German Politics

First up, Germany doesn't have a new Government yet, but the Greens will not be Merkel's next coalition partner. This isn't really news, a so called grand coalition with the SPD (new labor) was much more likely from the start.

Second, Merkel prevented a new EU compromise on car emissions. She wants higher Super Credits for environmental friendly cars, which basically just means counting these vehicles more than once when calculating the average fuel consumption of the whole automotive manufacturer's fleet. I have written  about super credits (counting electrical cars more than once against the CO2 emissions of the whole fleet) before; and described why I think they are important:

Super credits have the potential to increase the production capacity of zero emission vehicles, and also give companies an incentive to accept lower profit margins on these, therefore Merkel was right to stop the current proposal.

 So, again I completely agree with Merkel to stop an idiotic regulation based on fantasy assumptions of how much development potential is left concerning conventional engines. Also, we in the current form the regulation favors plug-in hybrids. Plug-in hybrid only produce less CO2 if one ignores the fact that more needs to be used in the production for the second engine and that the current German electricity comes in large parts from coal and lignite.

Still, CO2 regulation has become important for another reason. The CDU's biggest donor is the Quant family. The BMW shareholders gave €690,000 to Merkel's party this week. Of course, one would have to be an idiot to think that the Germany's biggest party can be bought with €690.000, still the timing is absolutely mind boggling.

Instead of a discussion about the size of super credits (should electrical vehicles be counted twice or thrice against the rest of the car fleet, for example), we now have a discussion about corruption. Super credits make sense since the buyers of large cars will cross finance zero-emission vehicles and thereby make them cheaper, but I have not seen a single article in the German media talking about this fact.

Other than that nothing will be happening until the coalition contract is written, which might take a while. Also there is a very small chance that we wont see a grand coalition in the end which would mean that there would be new elections, but that is extremely unlikely.

German Euro Sceptic Party

Germany now has its own Eurosceptic party, founded this Year by the journalist Conrad Adam, economics Professor Bernd Lucke and former IBM manager Henkel among others, the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) hopes to get into the Bundestag this September. The primary goal is to end the Euro of course but it is interesting how they want to achieve it.

We want to change the European Contracts so that any state is able to leave the Euro. Every nation has to be able to decide democratically over their currency.

Ok sounds reasonable. A nation can only be considered souvereign if it is able to choose its own currency. Of course this is for them just a means to achieve their goal of ending the Euro. The current plan sounds quite sinister, though:

We want that Germany enforces this right to leave the Euro by vetoing further  ESM loans.

So actually they don't want other nations to decide. Germany - through its power - will help them make this decision. This is also contrary to Lucke's statement that they want an orderly end of the Euro. What happens when Germany threatens its veto can currently be observed in Cyprus and nothing is orderly there.

There are a few more such talking points ranging from reduced EU bureaucracy to a simplified tax code but those wont help the all that much, since Merkel's CDU has either has a similar position or they are just generalities like: "Germany doesn't have enough children. It has to become more child and motherfriendly (sic)."

 In Germany a party has to get at least 5 % of the votes to get into the parliament. At this time it seems unlikely that the party will jump that hurdle. Even if it does AfD will definitely not become part of a coalition, so they will be rather irrelevant. But they might reduce the chances of the smallest partner in the Merkel government the struggling FDP to be in the next Bundestag.Thereby possibly preventing Merkel from being reelected. So we might see the former finance minister Steinbrück as chancellor.

This one bulletin point party is and will be irrelevant. But it got the media in Germany all dizzy, because some right wingers also want the Deutsche Mark back and therefore AfD is Hitler or something. Also it is dangerous, naive and have I mentioned Hitler? But the media also believes that the German economy is ever growing. They just make a habit of being wrong.