GHDI logo

Chancellor Helmut Kohl Celebrates the Success of the Social Market Economy (October 25, 1989)

page 4 of 6    print version    return to list previous document      next document


Unions and management decide on wages and working conditions and thereby significantly influence employment and jobs. Through their balanced approach to wage policy in recent years, the collective bargaining partners have greatly contributed to the success of our economy and the improvement of the situation on the labor market. The rapid rise in employment and the increasing number of available positions mean that most of today's unemployed have a real chance of finding a job again.

Employers and unions should do everything they can to keep it this way. And in light of the wage policy decisions that still lay before us, I appeal to unions and management to be mindful of their great responsibility for further economic development. In other words: among all the things to consider, we should never forget what our internationally competitive economy is capable of achieving.

This applies especially to the labor market, where significant problems persist. We cannot and will not accept the fact that one in three job-seekers has been unemployed for over a year. Additional efforts are necessary. I would like large companies, in particular, to do more than they’ve done up to now to give the long-term unemployed genuine assistance in re-entering the workforce. The federal government has made wage-cost subsidies of up to eighty percent available just for this purpose.

Just as pressing is the need for jobs for the many ethnic German remigrants [Aussiedler] and East German resettlers [Übersiedler] who are coming to us with great hopes and expectations. I would greatly welcome it if unions and management would make effective contributions to the specific solution of these problems. If nothing else they have a social responsibility to do so. And one core element of Erhard’s philosophy is that we must always count on those active in economic life to be willing to take responsibility.

What we need on the labor market – but not only there – is this: greater flexibility, imagination, and a balanced approach.

[ . . . ]


VI.

Ladies and gentlemen, it has become obvious, not only in the area of environmental protection, that our options for national [i.e. unilateral] measures are limited today and that international cooperation is far more promising. Our country has inextricable economic and political ties to other countries, especially, of course, to our partners in the European Community.

It therefore lies in our own best interest to cooperate better and pull even closer together, especially within the European Community. Let me begin with a few fundamental statements: for us Germans it has always been clear that the goal is the political unification of Europe. The large Single European Market, which will be completed on December 31, 1992, is an important goal, but it is only a stop on the way to [a united] Europe.

first page < previous   |   next > last page