Germany Coalition Deal with SPD Reached
Angela Merkel has taken a crucial step towards ending a four-month period of political uncertainty by reaching a coalition agreement with the centre-left Social Democrats – but at the cost of giving the party a greater role in government.
Following a marathon of all-night dealmaking sessions and several missed deadlines, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union on Wednesday agreed on the terms of a fresh deal with the SPD, whose supporters will now get a final say on the agreement through a membership vote.
But the prize of a renewed “grand coalition” is likely to come at the cost of ceding key ministries to her junior coalition partner, exposing the German chancellor to criticism from her own party.
The SPD leader, Martin Schulz, can be optimistic about rallying support for a new term in government after securing three influential trophy ministries. The draft coalition deal foresees the centre-left party filling the finance, foreign and labour ministries, as well as the roles for family, justice and the environment.
Schulz, who had ruled out playing a role in a Merkel government in the immediate aftermath of last year’s elections, is reportedly planning to hand his party leadership to the former labour minister Andrea Nahles and take charge of the foreign ministry himself.
The SPD mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, seen as a pragmatic centrist from the party’s liberal wing, is set to succeed the powerful Wolfgang Schäuble in the finance ministry, a key role for the future direction of the eurozone.
The draft coalition agreement hints at a departure from Schäuble’s hawkish focus on balanced budgets, promising a “solidaristic sharing of responsibilities” and a preparedness to increase German contributions to the EU budget.
At a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Merkel said that divvying up ministries had “not been easy” and acknowledged her party’s disgruntlement at the loss of the finance ministry.
“I’d wager that the SPD didn’t even believe it could get the finance ministry when the negotiations started,” the veteran CDU politician Wolfgang Bosbach told German media on Wednesday. “The CDU should have insisted on keeping the positions it already had.”
A boosted interior ministry with an additional focus on housing construction and life in regional areas has meanwhile reportedly been handed to Horst Seehofer of the Bavaria-based CSU, the Christian Democrats’ sister party – a consistent critic of Merkel’s policy course during the refugee crisis.
Such a constellation would leave Merkel’s own party with only the roles for the economy, defence, health, education and agriculture, and no truly high-profile ministries apart from her own chancellory.
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