Germany Approves Constitution Shake-up

The Bundesrat on Friday approved the country's biggest constitutional shake-up since the aftermath of World War II, a far-reaching reform package to modernize its ageing federal system.

The federalism reform bill passed with the required two-thirds majority a week after the lower house, the Bundestag, approved it.

It has been labeled the "mother of all reforms" because it envisions more than 20 amendments to the German constitution, the biggest change to the basic law since it was adopted in 1949, four years after the war ended.

The aim is to streamline Germany's government system, partly by curtailing some of the powers devolved to the country's 16 states. In future, for example, only 35 to 40 percent of draft laws will need the approval of both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, which represents the regional states. At present the figure is 60 percent.

Only two states -- Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein -- voted against the bill in the Bundesrat on Friday.

Model imposed by Allies

The federal model was imposed on Germany by the Allies after the war to prevent an abuse of centralized power, but it proved increasingly cumbersome after reunification in 1990.

During Gerhard Schröder's seven years as chancellor, the system allowed a Bundesrat dominated by the right repeatedly to block the government's reform projects.

Hans-Peter Schneider, a public law lecturer at Hanover University, said the reform would make federalism function again and welcomed the wider powers granted to the states, who already run their own police forces and set their own school calenders.

"By giving the states more power to set policy, we are bringing the decision-making process closer to the people," he told AFP.

But experts at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne told the press that the states would still have ways to block bills, if fewer, under the new federal system which Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes will facilitate her planned reform drive.

"The hope that this will speed up the law-making process in general is false," Simone Burkhart and Philip Manow told the
Tageszeitung newspaper on Friday.

The reform took years to hammer out because of the tug-of war over the sovereignty of the states and will be implemented in stages from now to the start of 2007.

The overhaul is the first major reform that Merkel's seven-month-old left-right coalition government has adopted.

It also this week presented the outlines of an overhaul of the
health care system, a hard-won compromise which showed up divisions in the coalition.

Observers say the health care reform reflects how difficult it is for Merkel to effect real change at the head of a power-sharing government.