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WOlfgang Clement, former Federal Minister for the Economy and Labor and former Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, has died. The former SPD politician passed away on Sunday at the age of 80. His family said he fell asleep peacefully in his bed.
Clement had turned his back on his party in the 2008 dispute. Until then, the eloquent lawyer was considered one of the most successful and at the same time most controversial Social Democrats of his generation.
As “super minister” from 2002, Clement was instrumental in Agenda 2010 in Gerhard Schröder’s red-green government, the far-reaching labor market and social reforms that brought Germany back to the first international league after the turn of the millennium.
Above all, the vigorous restructuring of the Federal Employment Agency and the Hartz reforms are associated with his name. And while in the years that followed more and more Social Democrats blamed the Agenda reforms for the party’s dramatic decline, Clement remained a staunch and, as a trained journalist, eloquent advocate of the more business-friendly track record ever had. SPD in its more than 100 years. History has always driven.
Born in the Ruhr area, the Bochum resident remained connected to coal mining all his life. For Clement, the labor market and energy policy have always gone hand in hand. And it was precisely these two issues that led the militant politician and then the manager to the most violent discussions not only with the Greens, but also with the comrades and finally led to a break with his party.
Fighters for coal
Whether as head of government in North Rhine-Westphalia or later as a cabinet member of the federal government, he always campaigned with full political weight and conviction for the preservation of the German coal industry. He did not accept that this attitude was no longer appropriate in times of climate change, as his opponents accused him.
And for economic reasons, Clement also saw the rapid phase-out of nuclear power as a fatal mistake and warned of the impending de-industrialization of Germany. His anger over energy and environmental policy and his party’s growing leftist stance eventually culminated in a public call in 2008 not to vote for the SPD in the state elections in Hesse.
At the time, the former minister was already a member of the supervisory board of a subsidiary of the energy giant RWE, which not only denounced many social democrats as nepotism in light of his previous work.
Too much economic proximity: this accusation accompanied Clemente throughout his life as a politician. After studying law, initially working as a political journalist for a local newspaper and later as editor-in-chief of a tabloid, the Social Democrat switched sides of the desk in 1981 and became a spokesman for the party’s executive.
Later, the father of five daughters quickly made a career out of the SPD stronghold of North Rhine-Westphalia under his political foster father Johannes Rau, until he finally took over as prime minister in 1998.
Four investigation commissions
However, his popularity as the father of the country remained subdued. And her four years in government were overshadowed on the one hand by four committees of inquiry into alleged inconsistencies, for example in economic development, and on the other hand by the ongoing dispute with the Green Environment Minister Bärbel Höhn.
Clement was never your typical Social Democrat. The tones of class struggle or union romance were still alien to him. For him, economic success has always been the prerequisite for everything social. With his pragmatic style of government, the SPD man always listened carefully to the Ruhr barons and other corporate leaders large and small.
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Former Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse sees the SPD on the brink, regardless of who is at the top. In Willy Brandt’s time, no one would have thought the party would sink that low. A history of decadence.
Source: WELT / Viktoria Schulte
With this profile, Clement was the man of the moment for Federal Chancellor Schröder in 2002 after his re-election. At the time, Germany was considered the “sick man of Europe”, plagued by massive unemployment and persistent economic recession. Creating jobs was the most difficult task for the Chancellor, and Clement, with his well-developed self-confidence, dared to do it.
As a prerequisite, he called for the Ministry of Economic Affairs to become a super ministry, also responsible for energy and, as a novelty, for labor market policy. Clement’s motto, “The social is what creates work”, marked a new direction in the red-green government. “Demand and support” was another catchphrase from the energetic super minister, who was soon changed as the next possible candidate for chancellor.
Hartz as a masterpiece
The implementation of the Hartz reforms, which were supposed to radically change the labor market, was Clement’s masterpiece. Reform measures devised by former VW manager Peter Hartz and his committee, such as promoting so-called I-AGs or inventing one-euro jobs, quickly became law at the ministry.
This was followed by the flexibility of the labor market through the facilitation of temporary work and the flexibility of fixed-term employment contracts. Above all, however, the amalgamation of previous welfare and unemployment assistance to form Unemployment Benefit II, popularly known as Hartz IV, earned Clement the reputation of an icy neoliberal who is tackling the welfare state with the wrecking ball.
The minister, who sometimes reacted angrily or cynically to criticism, was not discouraged by his conviction that he was on the right track, either because of Monday’s demonstrations or because of the poor SPD polls. The founding of the Left Party, joined by several Social Democrats, did not weaken Clemente either.
And he was deeply bitter that after the electoral defeat in 2005, the party moved further and further away from Schröder’s reform policy. The former super minister failed to understand that the Social Democracy is ashamed of Hartz’s reforms instead of being celebrated for the success of eliminating mass unemployment.
In old age he grew closer and closer to the FDP. He himself remains, as he put it, a “non-party social democrat.” But in terms of economic policy, he saw the Liberals as the “only progressive party.”
Germany is now in what is probably the worst recession since World War II. And an entrepreneur like Clement, who, regardless of the polls, implements a policy that creates and secures jobs rather than relying on social illusions, is missing.
