In the spotlight: Gerhard Schroeder

And even if the serving Chancellor does not keep his job, he has left the future government an expensive and controversial present by finalizing a deal to build a gas pipeline on the bed of the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany.

"We have secured Germany's energy needs for decades," Schroeder said, but it seems that he had also damaged relations with Poland and Baltic countries and left his successors with an expensive project that makes little economic sense. Schroeder has often been criticized for the strength of his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which go far beyond usual political contacts, and which have on a number of occasions resulted in German-Russian relations being carried out over the heads of Poland and other CEE states.

Born in Lower Saxony in 1944, Gerhard Schroeder's life is a true rags-to-riches story. He grew up in poverty and later had to work as a construction worker to pay for his law studies at a night school. He became Chancellor in 1998, ending the 16-year Kohl era, and was re-elected again in 2002. Although he stressed fighting unemployment as his government's priority, the country's five-million jobless is the largest figure in post-war Germany's history.