GERMANY’S president has called on his country’s political parties to reconsider their positions and
make it possible to form a new government.
Conservative chancellor Angela Merkel’s talks on forming a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and traditionally left-leaning Greens collapsed on Sunday night.
Yesterday, the centre-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s partners in the outgoing government, said they will not budge from their refusal to enter a new administration led by Merkel.
If that stands, a minority government or new elections are the only options.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who would have to decide on those options, said he will meet the various parties this week and urged them to rethink.
Steinmeier said: “There would be incomprehension and great concern inside and outside our country, and particularly in our European neighbourhood, if the political forces in the biggest and economically strongest country in Europe of all places did not fulfil their responsibility.”
Germany’s September 24 election produced an awkward result that left Merkel’s two-party conservative bloc seeking a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and the traditionally left-leaning Greens.
The combination of ideologically-disparate parties had not been tried before in a national government, and came to nothing when the Free Democrats walked out of talks on Sunday night.
Merkel said her conservatives had left “nothing untried to find a solution”.
She said that she “will do everything to ensure that this country is well-led through these difficult weeks”.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has expressed concern about the situation, which is not expected to be resolved quickly.
Speaking in Paris yesterday, Macron said: “It’s not in our interest for it to get tense.”
FDP leader Christian Lindner said his party pulled out of the talks rather than further compromise its principles.
Macron said he had spoken to Merkel on Sunday night and believed that the declarations of pro-business Lindner “were quite hard”.
The relationship between France and Germany, the eurozone’s two strongest economies, is seen as the driving force behind the European Union.
The Social Democrats have been the junior partners in a “grand coalition” government of Germany’s biggest parties since 2013.
But their leaders have said since the party slumped in September to its worst election result since the Second World War that it would go into opposition.
Party chairman Martin Schulz said yesterday that the Social Democrats are “not available” for a repeat of the outgoing coalition.
He said, after the election, “it was clear that the ‘grand coalition’ had got the red card”.
Schulz said his party is not afraid of a new election.
The German constitution does not allow parliament to dissolve itself, and so the president
has responsibility for how to proceed.
Steinmeier would have to first propose a chancellor to parliament, who would need to win a majority of all MPs to be elected.
However, assuming that fails, parliament has 14 days to elect a candidate of its own choosing by an absolute majority. And if that fails, Steinmeier would then propose a candidate who could be elected by a plurality of MPs.
Steinmeier would then have to decide whether to appoint a minority government or dissolve parliament, triggering an election within 60 days.
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