Central Europe
Central Europe Federal Republic of Germany Domestic Affairs J_/LECTION LOSSES AND internal government scandals in 1985 presented Chancellor Helmut Kohl with the biggest setbacks he had faced since taking office in 1982. Even his coveted "reconciliation" meeting with U.S. president Ronald Reagan at Bitburg in May, surrounded as it was by controversy, failed to bolster his sagging popularity. In two important state elections, Kohl's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lost to the left-of-center Social Democratic party (SPD). In the Saarland on March 10 the SPD won 49.2 percent of the vote, followed by the CDU (37.3 percent), the Free Democratic party (FDP) (10 percent), and the Greens party (2.5 percent). State elections in North Rhine-Westphalia on May 12 were swept by the ruling SPD, which obtained an absolute majority (52.1 percent), followed by CDU (36.5 percent), FDP (6 percent), and the Greens (4.6 percent). The newly elected head of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau, was nominated by the SPD to run against Kohl for the chancellorship in the 1987 general elections. Kohl's prestige was further shaken by an espionage scandal and by continuing revelations of corruption and illegal tax deals involving both political parties and prominent individuals. Otto Graf LambsdorfF, the West German economic minister who was forced to resign in 1984, went on trial in Bonn, together with his predeces- sor, Hans Friderichs, and former Flick manager Eberhard von Brauchitsch, on charges of bribery and corruption. The trial continued into 1986. The announcement in December by Friedrich Karl Flick that the industrial conglomerate he headed would be taken over by Deutsche Bank, the state's largest financial institution, for DM 5 billion, reopened the issue of Flick's failure to make good on his promise to pay 5 to 8 million marks as indemnification to former Jewish slave workers in Flick enterprises during World War II.
[Show full text]