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Germany’s SPD says it is ready for talks to end political crisis Germany’s SPD is ready for talks to end coalition deadlock
(about 1 hour later)
Germany’s Social Democrats have said they are ready to hold talks that may help Chancellor Angela Merkel resolve a deep political crisis without calling new elections. Martin Schulz, the leader of Germany’s Social Democratic party, has said he will not stand in the way of his party forming a “grand coalition” with Angela Merkel’s conservatives, signalling a potential end to a lengthy deadlock over the formation of a new German government.
“The SPD is of the firm conviction that there must be talks,” its general secretary, Hubertus Heil, said after an eight-hour, late-night meeting chaired by the SPD leader, Martin Schulz. “The SPD will not be closed to those talks.” Schulz, who has persistently expressed his opposition to the continuation of a left-wing conservative alliance, insisting German voters had clearly shown their opposition to it at elections on 24 September when they delivered the SPD its worst result since the second world war, has said he wants party members to be polled on the issue first.
Merkel’s conservative bloc topped a 24 September poll, but without a clear majority, in part due to the rise of the far-right, anti-immigration AfD, which took millions of votes from mainstream parties. Schulz was summoned to the office of president Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday evening for an emergency meeting to discuss how to avoid new elections following a collapse of coalition talks between Merkel’s CDU/CSU alliance, the pro-business FDP and the Greens last weekend.
Merkel has since failed to find coalition partners to govern the EU’s largest economy for her fourth term. Steinmeier had delivered a “dramatic appeal” to him, Schulz said, to drop his opposition to being part of a coalition, for the good of national stability. Following Schulz’s meeting with Steinmeier, the SPD leadership met at party headquarters on Thursday evening for hours of talks which went on late into the night leaving Germany on tenterhooks.
The centre-left SPD – Merkel’s former junior coalition allies – vowed to go into opposition immediately after the election, in which they scored a dismal result. German politics has been plunged into several days of uncertainty following the collapse of the talks, which broke down over issues related to the refugee crisis and environmental policies. The stalemate, Merkel’s biggest political crisis of her 12 years in office, has prompted speculation that a prolonged power vacuum in the continent’s largest economy could trigger instability across Europe.
However, Merkel’s talks with two other parties, the left-leaning Greens and pro-business FDP, collapsed early this week when the FDP unilaterally pulled out. Schulz signalled on Twitter on Friday afternoon that he would not ignore the president’s appeal. “Should this lead to us participating in whatever form in the formation of a government, the SPD’s members will take a vote on this,” he wrote.
Merkel has few options short of new elections: asking the SPD to enter a new “grand coalition”, or running a minority government, possibly with the Greens, and asking the SPD to cooperate on an issue-by-issue basis. Following the breakdown of talks aimed at forming a Jamaica Coalition – so-called because the participating parties’ colours resemble those of the Jamaican flag – the SPD has been under increasing pressure to back down from its previous insistence that it would not take place in a future government. Other options include a minority government, which the SPD has said it might be willing to support, or new elections, which all parties have insisted they wished to avoid.
Schulz has repeatedly rejected governing in Merkel’s shadow, but he is facing mounting pressure within his party ranks to rethink to stop Germany from sinking into months of paralysis. Schulz said his party was not fixed on any of the solutions. “There’s no automatism (action without conscious intention) in any direction,” he said.
“The SPD cannot behave like a child sulking in the corner,” said the SPD justice minister, Heiko Maas. Steinmeier had earlier announced that he has invited Schulz, along with Angela Merkel and Horst Seehofer, the head of her Bavarian sister party, the CSU, for joint talks, which according to some sources, will take place in the presidential palace, Bellvue, on Thursday.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier – who holds the power to call snap polls and who is himself a senior Social Democrat – also turned up the heat, saying this “is the moment when all participants need to reconsider their attitude”. The SPD has governed in coalition with Merkel since 2013. Polls have shown the electorate was largely against a repeat of the constellation, but that following the breakdown of Jamaica talks, the idea has once more grown in favour.
Steinmeier met Schulz on Thursday as part of a series of talks he is holding with all parties.
The SPD’s deputy chair, Manuela Schwesig, stressed on Friday that the SPD was “not automatically headed for a grand coalition”.
She said the conservatives, Greens and FDP had left “a pile of broken glass” two months after the election, and that “we can’t be asked to pick up all the shards within two days”.
“The two options now are for the SPD to join a grand coalition or to tolerate a conservative minority government,” said the political scientist Oskar Niedermayer.
The SPD’s dilemma was that after Schulz categorically ruled out working with Merkel, any change of position could spell “a major credibility problem” for the party, Niedermayer, of Berlin’s Free University, told news channel NTV.