Germans turned out in force on Saturday to protest their government's drive to trim the welfare state, heeding labor unions' call to "stand up and be counted" as leaders across Europe struggle to reform creaking social programs.
More than 200,000 protesters, blowing whistles and waving union flags, gathered in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate for the biggest rally yet against Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's year-old reform drive, police estimated. Organizers said turnout nationwide topped half a million, with big rallies also held in Cologne and Stuttgart.
Confronted with aging populations, Germany and other European nations are trying to reform generous, and expensive, welfare systems. But those efforts have attracted widespread resistance, along with complaints that pensioners and the jobless are bearing an unfair share of the pain.
PHOTO: AP
"We're fed up with so-called reforms that we have to pay for but others benefit from," the head of German manufacturing union IG Metall, Juergen Peters, said at Saturday's protest in Cologne.
The demonstrations were billed as part of a "European day of action" that also drew tens of thousands of retirees onto the streets of Rome to demand higher pensions and complain of steep increases in their cost of living.
Union leaders, who have been at the forefront of protests against government plans to reform Italy's generous pension system, said turnout was at least half a million, while police gave no estimate.
In Paris, some 5,500 people marched in support of unions' call for "a more social Europe," police said. Other French cities saw smaller demonstrations.
In Berlin, protesters' placards said that "social demolition creates no jobs" and urged Schroeder to throw his "agenda in the trash."
Schroeder's so-called "Agenda 2010" of reforms, launched last year as Germany limped into a third year of economic stagnation, includes higher health care fees, lower retirement and jobless benefits, looser job protection laws and income tax cuts.
It has angered many Germans and drawn stiff resistance from left-wingers inside his Social Democratic Party as well as the unions, the party's traditional allies.
Schroeder argues that he can only preserve the welfare state for future generations by pressing ahead now with cuts, but that has done little to dampen resentment over higher health care costs and a freeze of retirement benefits this year.
"We do have to think of our children," protester Christa Wolter, age 67 and retired, said in Berlin. "But this has to be done more fairly -- the burden is falling on those who can't defend themselves."
The chancellor said ahead of Saturday's protests that he wouldn't change course, although his party's poll ratings have been mired in a slump for months.
"When you organize a reform process, you have a problem -- the burdens become apparent immediately," Schroeder said in a radio interview on Friday. "The positive effects will come later."
"If you look around Europe, you will see that all its governments have a lot of explaining to do," he added. "But we must carry on explaining patiently and put up with the fact that polls don't look how we would like them to."
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