Word: chancellor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like Ronald Reagan, he is a folksy, conservative politician with an easygoing, leisurely work style. But last week, West Germany's newly chosen Chancellor Helmut Kohl, 52, was behaving like a man without a moment to lose. Within three hours of taking over the glass-and-steel Bonn Chancellery from Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt, the Christian Democratic leader had sworn in a new 17-member Cabinet, chaired his first Cabinet meeting, held a press conference and jetted off to Paris for a hastily arranged get-acquainted dinner with his most important Western European partner, French President Fran...
From the moment he was sworn in as Chancellor, Kohl tried to assure West Germans that he would continue the foreign policies of Schmidt's government, including support for the installation of U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles in the country. "The Americans are our most important partners and allies," he told the press conference, but then quickly added that the transatlantic relationship means "friendship and partnership, not dependency." Kohl gave a critical edge to that remark by referring to the gas pipeline from the Soviet Union that a consortium of Western European nations is financing and building despite...
Kohl will have to tread cautiously at home. Even before his Bundestag victory last week, West Germany's powerful trade unions had begun girding for conflict with the new Chancellor, who must quickly come to grips with problems of the country's sagging economy. The most sensitive issue is social-welfare spending: at a time when 1.8 million West Germans are unemployed, businessmen are complaining loudly that 70% of their labor costs are for social benefits, the steepest percentage in Western Europe. Says Liane Launhardt, an economist for the Frankfurt-based Commerzbank: "There is no doubt that what...
...limiting public-sector wage increases, Monika Wulf-Mathies, leader of the country's 1 .2 million-member civil servants union, called the plan a "declaration of war," and threatened strike action if the proposal is carried out. Having long and patiently planned his parliamentary assault on the Chancellor's office, Kohl must now prepare for all the battles that his new job will entail...
...Under Article 67 of West Germany's constitutional Basic Law, a simple majority of deputies in the 497-seat Bundestag can remove the Chancellor provided that they "constructively" designate a successor. As Christian Democratic leader in 1972, Rainer Barzel tried and failed to use the provision to topple Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt...