With local elections taking place in Oberursel tomorrow, amongst other things for the town parliament (Stadtparlament), I decided to take a trip into the town centre this morning and see what the political parties had to say for themselves.

In particular I wanted to know about plans to replace the town swimming pool, which has been closed for several years.  Recently there has been some discussion about the town selling off land to finance the building work.  This would not be so bad, if there was not already a sports field on it!

Then I wanted to know what plans the town has for the future of the schools here, in particular any plans for Ganztagsschulen – schools that teach all day rather than just in the morning.

And finally I wanted to see what they had to say about the forthcoming Hessentag, in particular about the lack of information for businesses in the town and my recent attempts to get a permit to enter the closed-off part of the town in order to visit my customers during the event. (more…)

… or so it would seem.  After the recent general elections (Bundestagswahl) we can expect to have a so-called “black and yellow coalition” in power.

The colours refer to the CDU and FDP parties, who are not actually so far apart in many of their policies, but still have a lot of debating to do until they agree on everything.

What worried me a little bit was a comment that I heard on the radio a few days ago, that “all topics are open to discussion”.  I would have expected that some topics did not need to be discussed, and it reminded me of the last round of coalition talks 4 years ago, where the CDU and SPD discussed raising the VAT rate.  One party wanted to raise it by 1%, the other did not want to raise it at all, and in the end they agreed on 3%!

Over the next few weeks the parties – including the CSU as well – will thrash out their policies and come up with a contract by which they will theoretically govern the country for the next 4 years.  I am wondering how much they will undo the work of the previous CDU/SPD coalition, and in particular how many policies will be agreed upon, that neither party had in their manifesto during the election campaign.

Scrapping the Gesundheitsfond would be a good start…

Throughout June German Words Explained will be looking at the political parties in Germany.

This week we start with the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU) and the Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern (CSU).

The CDU was founded shortly after the end of the Second World War in 1945.  The following politicians belonged or belong to the party: Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Helmut Kohl, Theo Waigel, Norbert Blüm and Angela Merkel.

The CSU was founded in at the beginning of 1946, and is the CDU partner in Bavaria.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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