Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, I was Zanemunshank and Jack Smith.

Today we will talk about coalitions, coalitions in Europe, what happens to them after elections, why nothing ever changes after elections.

And I want to start with Germany. Germany has a government, a new government,

for six months now, led by Friedrich Mertz, and it has its first coalition crisis.

It's unusually early. We saw the previous government under Schultz sets of the record of

this adjustment by the public in a new government.

But at least they had a year before people really got fed up with them.

And even after a year, there was still a modicum of respect

and that lasted for another six months, nine months, until it completely collapsed.

And then they had a final year where things were really dreadful.

Here it really happened early after six months.

And it happened because Mertz has ever making big speeches, big announcements, and they're

not delivering.

Mertz promised reforms.

Trouble with the word, we keep saying this in our briefing.

The word reform means different things to different people. In the German social democratic history, reforms usually

meant the strengthening of working rights, I mean the big reforms of the 1970s, now Billy Bruns

reforms of co-determination, workers' co-determination, strengthening of union rights. So the word reform

was for a very long time associated with strengthening of the sort of corporatist system.

Under Gerhard Schroeder, reforms became also a strengthening of the corporate system, but a weakening of welfare claims.

So workers' rights were not affected. There was no reduction in the rights of unions,

a strong increase in the right of companies relative to the position they had before,

...