Kohl Stresses ‘Lean State,’ Individual Responsibility : Germany: He hopes to shrink the bureaucracy, get people to take charge of their own well-being.

In his first general policy speech to Parliament since winning reelection in October, Chancellor Helmut Kohl said that his goals for the next four years include pruning the German bureaucracy, putting the nation’s hard-core unemployed back to work and encouraging coddled citizens to take greater responsibility for their own well-being.

“Many in our country expect too much from the state and are not willing enough to share the responsibility,” Kohl said, adding that he also intends to reduce state spending, shrink welfare payments and find ways of cutting the benefits given to public-assistance recipients who refuse to take low-paying but suitable jobs.

“We want the ‘lean state,’ ” Kohl said, repeating a slogan originally aired last week, when the leaders of his three-party coalition unveiled their working agenda. “This lean state gives more freedom to the individual, but also requires more responsibility.”

Kohl was reelected only narrowly last month, in balloting that shrank his coalition’s majority to 10 seats from 134 in the 672-member Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament. Although the German business community has been crying out for precisely the sort of bureaucratic slimming Kohl described Wednesday, the veteran chancellor is likely to run into tough opposition from the center-left Social Democratic Party when he tries to implement his goals in specific legislation.

The Social Democrats emerged from the last election strong in the Bundesrat, or upper house of Parliament, which has the authority to block legislation on fiscal policy and other central matters. Social Democratic Party leader Rudolf Scharping was quick to denounce Kohl’s program Wednesday as “lacking in substance.”

“We will fight these policies with all our strength,” pledged Scharping, whose complaints were backed up by the left-leaning Greens, who also gained strength in the last election.

“Kohl’s ‘coalition of fear’ has no answers to our looming questions,” charged Greens spokesman Joschka Fischer. The Greens and Social Democrats hope to work together in the coming months to crack Kohl’s coalition before the chancellor can finish his four-year term.

In his speech, which was designed to show that he still has fresh ideas even after 12 years as chancellor, Kohl said he would soon meet with business and labor leaders to try to come up with specific ways of addressing the German economy’s inability to create jobs. His immediate ideas, he said, include channeling young people away from academic programs and into professional training programs, promoting part-time employment and increasing the “flexibility” of the German work force.

The German labor market is notorious for being overpaid and underworked, compared to the countries with which it must now compete. German labor is among the most expensive in the world, the workweek is relatively short and firing people is costly and difficult.

Civil servants in particular are hard to lay off, but Kohl said he hopes to be able to reduce the size of the civil service by 1%, by merging or eliminating certain federal agencies. He also said he wants to streamline the legal system and simplify German tax laws.

“We have reached a point in our land where not enough can be accomplished, but almost anything can be prevented,” he said.

In other areas, Kohl said he wants to fight crime, create a special citizenship category for certain children of long-term immigrants, and push ahead with the speedy integration of Europe, including the countries of the former Eastern Bloc.

“The German government will work intensively in coming years to see that decisive steps are taken finally to overcome the division of Europe and secure long-term peace and freedom,” said Kohl, one of the dwindling number of politicians to be guided by firsthand experience of Nazism and world war. Observers who support his foreign policy worry that his European unity goals will be sidetracked by the inevitable fighting over his domestic economic policy.