The parties' tax tangle

摘要

With little more than a month to go before Germany's parliamentary election, the Social Democratic Party (spd) has so far failed to draw Chancellor Angela Merkel into a fight. Its chairman, Franz Miintefering, accused her of not caring about jobs, which sounded silly (the spd says it will create 4m by 2020). Ms Merkel did not rise to the bait. Her plan is to shun the grubbiness of campaigning as long as she can and hope that on September 27th her personal popularity propels the Christian Democratic Union (cdu) back into power at the head of the next coalition government.