The first two state elections of the year have come and gone in Germany, and things are starting to pick up again within the federal government. For weeks, the coalition of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/ Christian Social Union (CSU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had put governing on the back burner — for fear of causing discontent among  voters in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate . All the while, long-overdue reforms are needed to get