Politicians, industrial leaders, trade unions, media and population consider the Agenda 2010, especially the Hartz IV law, as the largest cut into the German system of social security since World War II.
After Schröder threatened to resign (with no obvious successor as Chancellor) if the changes were blocked within his party, since they were so vital to his government's policy, he received an inner-party 80% vote of confidence as well as a 90% approval from his coalition partner, the Greens.
In reaction to the Agenda's policies and the measures taken, a significant number of members of Schröder's SPD left the party,[3] but the more prominent left-wing politicians stayed on.
The German Trade Union Federation (DGB), the most influential group outside parliament and historically interwoven with the SPD, massively stepped up their discourse against Agenda 2010, especially prior to the Hartz IV law in July 2004, but the rumble subsided quickly after a summit meeting with Schröder in August 2004.
In December 2003, the Bundesrat, dominated by the opposition CDU party, blocked some of the reforms on political grounds until several compromises were reached, many of which put a particularly painful twist—for those affected, for example the unemployed or the ill—on the measures taken.
Dissatisfaction with Agenda 2010, and in particular with Hartz IV, lead to thousands of people protesting in the streets of Berlin, Leipzig and other big cities particularly in eastern, but also western Germany over the summer of 2004 (see Monday demonstrations, 2004).
Dissent with the Agenda 2010 had also promoted the foundation of a new political party, the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) by long-term SPD members and union activists.
The WASG was squarely against the measures taken in the Agenda 2010 process and ran in the 2005 North Rhine-Westphalia state election, where it gained 2.2% of the votes and no seat, against what it considered "the neoliberal consensus" displayed by the governing centre-left political parties and the more conservative opposition alike.
The immediate aftermath of the Agenda 2010 reforms was that unemployment rose to over 5.2 million people in February 2005[4] and Schröder called German companies "lazy" for failing to hire more workers.