Merkel anxious to start governing with new coalition

Germany’s acting chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to get back to work on a bulging “order book” of political promises to be delivered on.

A day after two-thirds of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) membership voted to back another grand coalition, the German leader said she understood widespread frustration at the lengthy delay in forming a government.

“Almost six months after election day, people have a right to expect that something happens,” said Dr Merkel, head of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “It will be important that we as a government begin work quickly.”

After being nominated on Monday for her fourth term, with the vote likely on March 14th, the German leader joked that she hoped she was elected.

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That is a given considering the grand coalition’s majority – but the government’s strength is deceptive after the big parties suffered their worst results in the post-war era.

Challenge

The CDU and with its Bavarian CSU allies hold 246 seats – nine fewer than the CDU alone in the last parliament. The SPD, meanwhile, has lost 40 seats in a much larger Bundestag: 709 seats compared to 631 last time. Where Dr Merkel commanded 80 per cent of the votes in the last, five-party parliament, Merkel IV holds just 56 per cent of the seats in the current, seven-party chamber.

In particular the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as leader of the opposition, is anxious to challenge the new, old government.

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the AfD in the Bundestag, predicted on Monday that the “Merkel system will, in the end, pull all of them into the abyss”.

The liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who chose opposition rather than a coalition with the CDU last November, suggested Sunday’s SPD result suggested the party was “more afraid of new elections than further marginalisation in another grand coalition”.

Snap poll

A snap poll on Monday suggested Germans almost evenly divided on whether they relish another four years of grand coalition rule, though three-quarters expect it to hold the full term until 2021.

Aware of the backlog of work awaiting them, senior CDU officials insisted on Monday the new government would work “harder than ever before” in the spring and summer. Things are likely to slow down after that ahead of state elections in Bavaria and Hesse, governed by Merkel allies.

Asked about her immediate priorities, Dr Merkel said the EU required “a strong German voice together with France and other member states”.

This was particularly important given current trade issues, she said, a nod to the trade war with the US over steel – an industry “on which many jobs in Germany depend”.

‘Compromise’

“We see every day from what we hear just how needed Europe is,” she added.

For Daniela Schwarzer, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin will need “diplomatic skills and the will to compromise” to get the EU moving again.

“It will also require more German investment in EU matters and bilateral relationships,” she said on Monday, “as the coalition agreement acknowledges.”