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Europeans protest welfare system cuts { April 5 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)    http://www.iht.com/articles/513310.html http://www.iht.com/articles/513310.html Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Europeans protest welfare system cuts The Associated Press Monday, April 5, 2004 BERLIN Germans have turned out in force to protest their government's drive to trim the welfare state, heeding labor union calls to "stand up and be counted" as leaders across Europe struggle to reform social programs. More than 200,000 protesters, blowing whistles and waving union flags, gathered in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on Saturday for the biggest rally yet against Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's year-old reform drive, the police estimated. Organizers said turnout nationwide topped 500,000, 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. "We're fed up with so-called reforms that we have to pay for but others benefit from," Jürgen Peters, head of German manufacturing union IG Metall, said at a 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 said turnout was at least 500,000, while the police gave no estimate. There were also smaller demonstrations in France. In Berlin, protesters' placards said that "social demolition creates no jobs" and urged Schröder to throw his "agenda in the trash." Schröder'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 leftists inside his Social Democratic Party as well as the unions, the party's traditional allies. Schröder argues that he can preserve the welfare state for future generations only 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," Christa Wolter, 67, 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 the protests Saturday that he would not change course, although his party's poll ratings have been slumping for months. "When you organize a reform process, you have a problem - the burdens become apparent immediately," Schröder said in a radio interview Friday. "The positive effects will come later." Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune

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