Berlin - Germany's Social Democrats have just picked themselves up off the carpet. Two months after the SPD, Europe's largest centre-left party, took a thumping from the public in the European Parliament elections, the party has gone from fear of terminal decline to a sudden thrust of energy.
On Tuesday, German foreign minister, party leader and top candidate against Chancellor Angela Merkel in September's general election, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, departed on a tour of 14 of Germany's 16 states.
On the face of it, the signs for the traditionally working-class- based SPD are not propitious: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predictions of nearly 12 per cent unemployment in 2010, and an opinion poll nadir of just 24 per cent support.
But the minister claims to have a big idea up his sleeve.
"By the year 2020 German industry will have developed into the innovation leader in the efficiency revolution," he said in a 52-page policy document entitled "The Work of Tomorrow", released to much fanfare in Berlin on Monday evening.
The central, recession-busting claim with which Steinmeier is hoping to win over a wary public is this: 4 million new jobs will be created within a decade, half of which will come through the re- direction of the German economy toward so-called green technology.
Electric cars, windmills, solar panels: These are now the great green hope of the SPD's economic vision.
The other two million new jobs, according to Steinmeier, will come from the service sector, including health-care and the creative industries.
"Four million jobs in 10 years is realistic. It's do-able," he said on Tuesday.
The initial reaction to the plan has been sharp, and skeptical.
Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and the SPD's main election opponent, said "Steinmeier is now just clutching at straws. He's promising jobs that he can in no way deliver."
Germany's Greens, who themselves have promised new jobs through environmentally-friendly technology (although a mere one million), accused the SPD of stealing their ideas.
Steinmeier's own party members, however, are enthused.
The plan "makes it clear that a change of direction is coming. That will influence the mood of the election," Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the German Press Agency dpa.
But there is, however, not a lot of new substance in Steinmeier's plan; it's just that the foreign minister has super-sized an existing tendency in German industry.
Germany is, as well as being the world's largest exporter, already a market leader in the kinds of technology that have now found their way into the SPD's election strategy.
According to a report published in May by the consultancy group Roland Berger, in 2007 Germany had some 30 per cent of the world market in energy-efficiency technology such as long-lasting light- bulbs and 20 per cent of the market in "sustainable transport" - electric cars, instead of petrol-driven ones.
The report argued that by 2020, the level of jobs in Germany related to green technology could rise from its 2008 level of 1.1 million to some 2.2 million.
In terms of sales, if Roland Berger's prognosis is correct, Germany by 2020 could be pulling in nearly 500 billion euros per year from green technology.
In comparison, Germany's all-important car-making industry currently turns over around 290 billion euros a year, according to the report.
What is new is the direct link to a route out of the current recession.
"This vision of the 'Work of Tomorrow' is our compass out of the crisis," the minister's report says.
However the tax-cut advocating CDU, and the smaller, liberal Free Democrats, are not likely to hold back from labelling the plan as mere green-washed economic planning and control by the state.
The CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU, who have for decades been dominant in a region that is home to Siemens, BMW and other industrial giants, have already been derisive.
"Now comes the five year plan. It's not a new start for the social-market economy, just a new start for a planned economy," said the CSU's general secretary Alexander Dobrindt.
But at any rate, the Social Democrats have now produced as an election platform precisely what many have accused Chancellor Merkel and her party of lacking: a big idea.
