At a summit meeting in Berlin on June 4 where the coalition government's three party leaders met (CDU, CSU, FDP), the liberal party (FDP) reaffirmed its opposition to the introduction of minimum wage in agreements without a collective agreement on the subject and to any form of quotas for women on company boards. Therefore, it currently seems that these two plans, which recently received support from Angela Merkel's party, are quite unlikely to succeed before the national election in September 2013. However, the parties in power reached an agreement on the introduction of a "childcare bonus" (Betreuungsgeld), which the government should officially adopt today, June 6. (Ref. 120367)
Veto from the liberal party. A short while ago, the conservative party changed its mind regarding two major issues for businesses. On May 24, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Horst Seehofer, leader of the CSU (the CDU’s Bavarian federation), agreed to introduce a system of “flexible quotas” to increase the number of women on company boards (see our dispatch No. 120348). About a month earlier, the conservatives made another ideological u-turn, adding the idea of universal...
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