Angela Merkel’s grand coalition will go down in history as the hardest-working German government in 60 years, adding to the list of – often less glorious – records broken by the chancellor since she took office four years ago.

Statistics published on Friday – the last day of the last ordinary session of parliament until the election of September 27 – showed the two houses had passed 582 laws since October 2005, (half submitted by the government), breaking the previous record by 16 laws.