Where Now for European Social Democracy? - Policy Network

SIGMAR GABRIEL 25The task of the SPD remains:strengthening people and opening pathsToday, what is the meaning of freedom, justice and solidarity ina modern society considering the dramatic change in the economy,social structure and demographic developments? 140 years ago,when members of craft guilds and workers organised, freedom andjustice were existential values in a society that prevented theirimplementation to a great extent. Solidarity was then a merit that wasfirst and foremost practiced daily by the labour movement throughself-organisation, because Imperial Germany did not want to grantsolidarity to the workers. In the last 140 years, social democrats havelaboriously struggled, at times bitterly, for a high degree of freedom,justice and solidarity. However, no one will deny that today theGerman social state is arranged fundamentally differently than theclass-based society of 1863. This is precisely because of socialdemocracy, which has throughout the years achieved significantchanges and improvements for people and their co-existence.In our modern society there are also barriers for the personalopportunities of the individual as well as for societal developments:educational opportunities continue to be strongly linked to socialinheritance; children are a poverty risk for families; bringing upchildren can be incompatible with having a job; increasing massunemployment; the recurrent failure to integrate foreigners andre-settlers; and, the decreasing ability of our cities to create socialintegration, to list just some of the problems. It is precisely thetraditional voter groups of the SPD who increasingly feel that we areno longer sufficiently aware of these barriers and the everydayconcerns. Young families that can only afford children or holidays, thetechnician or engineer who at the age of 50 can no longer findemployment, the craftsman who must spend 10 per cent of his netincome on nursery school spaces for his two children or the pensionerwho has not moved in 30 years, but in the meantime no longer feels athome, 70 per cent of those living in his part of town now being foreigners.Thus there are enough tasks for a party that has devoted itself tothe principle capability of emancipating the individual and society.