What Angela Merkel’s Election Platform Means for Europe

Chancellor Angela Merkel presented her campaign platform on Monday, pledging to keep Germany a reliable partner in an unsettling world, hold the euro area to its fiscal pact and deliver a 15 billion-euro ($17 billion) tax cut mostly for mid-level incomes. Three months before Germans go to the polls, the proposals by Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and her Bavarian CSU allies reflect an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach to an economy that’s seeing steady growth and record-low unemployment, according to Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg. Some of the top themes:

It’s short on details, calling for Germany to stay highly competitive and vowing to “protect ourselves against unfair trade practices” while championing free trade. Headline pledges include halving unemployment to less than 3 percent by 2025, four years beyond Merkel’s next term if she wins it on Sept. 24. “This platform doesn’t offer a lot of impulses for the German economy, but it also doesn’t give the Social Democrats a lot to attack,” said Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING-Diba in Frankfurt.