The Chancellor celebrates - but is it too early?

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder may have succeeded in persuading his Social Democratic Party to back his "Agenda 2010" reform package, but the press is not particularly impressed by his achievement.

Even newspapers that might be expected to be sympathetic towards Mr Schroeder are pessimistic about the outcome.

"Realisation of necessity" is the headline over a commentary in the left-leaning Frankfurter Rundschau on the SPD's unenthusiastic acceptance of the inevitable.

The mountain has laboured and brought forth an Agenda mouse Bild-Zeitung

It sees Sunday's events as a story of "how the SPD delegates followed their chancellor in a melancholy mood at their special congress, without being convinced deep down".

Party divisions

Another article in the same newspaper warns against reading too much into the 90% vote in favour of the package.

"Agenda 2010 has completed its first phase - the party phase - with a majority that matches the balance of power in the SPD, not its convictions," Knut Pries writes.

"The disunity is real," he warns.

"For some it doesn't go far enough, because it clearly does too little for the rescue package that it is... For others it goes too far, because the cuts and sacrifices are far more tangible than the intended benefit and they are afraid that the price of rescuing the welfare state will be its dismantling."

The chancellor, his party and the country needed to be confronted with the threat of destruction before doing anything about the longstanding realization that we are living beyond our means Der Tagesspiegel

The left-of-centre Berliner Zeitung similarly believes Mr Schroeder has failed to win over his party.

His speech contained a liberal sprinkling of Social Democratic terms such as "justice", "solidarity" and "liberty", but this, it says, served merely to highlight "questions to which his Agenda 2010 provides at best initial answers, without conveying truly sustainable solutions".

Only a beginning

A commentator in the centrist Der Tagesspiegel agrees.

"The delegate who said the Agenda is just the beginning of the beginning was right," Tissy Bruns comments.

Even while welcoming the fact that the SPD appears to have found a purpose, the article focuses on pitfalls.

"The chancellor, his party and the country needed to be confronted with the threat of destruction before doing anything about the longstanding realization that we are living beyond our means," it regrets.

It warns that a broad range of forces - including the trade unions, the SPD's left wing and the right-of-centre opposition - are ready to obstruct the reform plan.

"The SPD has a purpose again - it is right, but many don't like it."

Conservative newspapers are predictably quick to focus on the chancellor's problems.

What might go too far for the Social Democratic soul doesn't go anything like far enough for our country Die Welt

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung highlights the SPD's divisions.

"On one side is the small camp of popular left-wing guardians of tradition, who believe the crisis... can be resolved through greater 'social justice'," it says.

Pitted against them it sees "the 'reformers', who have realised that the welfare state can be saved only if the demands made on it are drastically reduced".

Too little, too late?

"What has Gerhard Schroeder won that he didn't already have?", the broadsheet Die Welt asks rhetorically.

The congress vote will impose greater discipline on the SPD's members of parliament and put pressure on the opposition not to block the Agenda's passage through the upper house, it concedes, "but that's all for now".

"Measured against the country's real problems, the chancellor's reforms are at best a first step," for which his party may not have the appetite.

"What might go too far for the Social Democratic soul doesn't go anything like far enough for our country," it concludes.

The tabloid Bild-Zeitung makes similar points more pithily.

"Agenda 2010: too little, too late," it declares.

"The mountain has laboured and brought forth an Agenda mouse."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.