Schroeder bitter after disastrous EU election

CHANCELLOR Gerhard Schroeder pledged to pursue his economic reforms despite his party’s thrashing in European Parliament elections, its worst showing since the World War II in a nationwide German vote.

Schroeder’s Social Democrats slumped to 21.5%, from 30.7% in the last European Parliament election in 1999, prompting critics in the party to call for a halt to trims in social welfare programmes and changes in his Cabinet.

The opposition Christian Democrats, who finished ahead with 44.5%, questioned whether Schroeder still has a mandate to run Germany.

Schroeder insisted there was no alternative to curbs in state benefits and an easing of job protection, which he says are needed to boost the German economy, Europe’s largest. He acknowledged he had antagonised large numbers of voters.

“Of course, it hurts when the support isn’t there,” he said in Berlin as his party’s leaders met to discuss the fiasco. “But it is my firm conviction that this policy is necessary for our country.”

“There’s no denying the bitterness of the defeat.”

Schroeder’s spokesman, Bela Anda, rejected calls for changes in the Cabinet.

However, even the Social Democratic party’s leader suggested Schroeder’s course may have become too painful. Reforms should increasingly take into account the weakest members of society, said Franz Muentefering, without elaborating.

Germany’s next general election is in the autumn of 2006, but Sunday’s rout added to the gloom as Schroeder faces a series of regional elections this year and next.

“For Gerhard Schroeder, this is a massacre in instalments,” conservative paper Die Welt commented.

Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber, Schroeder’s conservative challenger in the last general election, took the results as a sign the Social Democrats had lost their mandate to govern.