The CDU-CSU alliance opposed the full tax cut on the grounds that Germany could not afford it.

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Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, from Mrs Merkel's conservative CDU-CSU alliance, criticised the pledges, saying they were short of detail.

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"We have decided - the CDU-CSU faction in the Bundestag - that there would be no more expansion at all, " he told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.

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The 18 September elections left neither the centre-left SPD nor the conservative CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, with a majority in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament.

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Mr Guttenberg, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) - the Bavarian sister party of Mrs Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) - was also stripped of his PhD by the University of Bayreuth last year after evidence of his plagiarism emerged.

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