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Merkel’s Options Narrow as Greens Withdraw From Talks
Merkel Lists Policy Goals, as Coalition Options Narrow
(about 11 hours later)
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s options for building a new German government narrowed Wednesday after one of two potential coalition partners withdrew from talks, setting the stage for a possible grand coalition of her conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats.
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel laid out her priorities on Wednesday for the next German government, as her options for a coalition partner to form that new government narrowed to one: her party’s main rival, the center-left Social Democrats.
The decision by the Greens, one of the potential coalition partners, not to pursue further negotiations with Ms. Merkel’s party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union, and its Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union, does not mean that negotiations with the other potential partner, the Social Democrats, will be any swifter or easier. But it increases the pressure on the conservative bloc to compromise with the Social Democrats, who are demanding a high price for participation in a government.
Speaking publicly for the first time since her conservative Christian Democrat-led bloc won the most seats in parliamentary elections on Sept. 22, Ms. Merkel named four goals for her next government: stability in the euro zone, a successful and affordable energy transformation, an overhaul of the way tax money is divided between Germany’s states and its central government, and a strategy for coping with the aging of the country’s population.
Conservative leaders said the Greens withdrew from coalition talks early Wednesday after concluding that differences over crucial issues, including a minimum wage, tax increases and changes to the public health insurance system, were too large to overcome.
“I want a stable euro area,” Ms. Merkel told a gathering of mining, energy and chemical industry unions in Hanover. “Europe should emerge strengthened from the crisis, in the same way that Germany was able to come out of the 2008-2009 crisis.”
“We had to accept after these talks the Greens’ position that they are unable to recommend we enter into formal coalition negotiations,” Hermann Gröhe, general secretary of the Christian Democrats, told reporters. “We respect that, but at the same I think that these talks were important in terms of better understanding the other side.”
Sticking to a line that marked her government of the previous four years, the chancellor said that Europe needed to make itself more competitive by investing in research and development, and she underlined Germany’s commitment to holding the European Union together. She said Germany would go ahead with a decision to abandon nuclear power in favor of renewable energy sources, while acting to stabilize electricity prices, which have risen sharply in recent years.
Although Ms. Merkel’s conservatives won a plurality with 41.5 percent of the vote in the Sept. 22 elections, they fell five seats short of a governing majority. The Greens, who got 8.4 percent of the vote, won enough seats to create a majority under Ms. Merkel if they entered a coalition.
Ms. Merkel once again expressed skepticism about instituting a minimum wage, saying that overregulation of business might kill jobs. The minimum wage issue is expected to be the main sticking point in coalition talks between her bloc and the Social Democrats, which are set to resume Thursday.
If the Social Democrats, who won 25.7 percent of the vote, enter into government with the chancellor’s bloc, the Greens will become a main opposition force, along with the Left party. The Greens remain one of the youngest parties in Germany’s political landscape and have never governed with the conservatives at the national level, although there have been coalitions between the two in municipal and state governments. Despite their roots in the leftist and environmental movements of the 1960s and ‘70s, the Greens have recently appealed to a more centrist audience, and the idea of a coalition had sparked the imaginations many younger conservatives.
Though she said she supported “the right of every person who works full time being able to live from their job,” Ms. Merkel said unions and employers, not the government, should set wage floors.
Nevertheless, a majority of Germans said even before the September vote that they preferred a government made up of the conservatives and the Social Democrats. Ms. Merkel governed in such a grand coalition of the two largest parties from 2005 to 2009, a period that many credit for the stability that set the country on a course to weather the global economic downturn largely unscathed.
The Social Democrats have said they will not participate in any government that does not adopt a minimum wage. Andrea Nahles, the party’s general secretary, has said the two sides are exploring a compromise based on a model used in Britain, where the government appoints an independent body to recommend a national wage rate.
Mr. Gröhe said his party would approach the Social Democrats about holding a third round of preliminary discussions on Thursday, as differences remained after an eight-hour session on Monday.
Fiscal policy is another subject of disagreement. The conservatives have pledged not to raise taxes, but the Social Democrats have promised to increase spending for infrastructure and education, two areas in which there is broad agreement that action is needed. A compromise solution may be to raise more revenue from nontax sources like highway tolls.
Although leading Christian Democrats said the talks on Monday night went well, Hannelore Kraft, a Social Democratic leader, reportedly clashed with the general secretary of the Bavarian Christian Social Union in an emotional exchange of words over benefits for families.
The other party that might have joined with Ms. Merkel’s conservatives to form a government was the Green Party, but the Greens decided to drop out of negotiations.
Policies on taxes and government spending are the main sources of conflict between the two major parties. The conservatives have pledged not to raise taxes, but the Social Democrats have promised to increase spending for infrastructure and education, two areas where there is broad agreement that action is needed. A compromise may take the form of raising fees like highway tolls as a way of generating income while avoiding broad-based tax increases.
Conservative leaders said the Greens withdrew after concluding that differences over a number of issues, including a minimum wage, tax increases and changes to the public health insurance system, were too large to overcome.
The minimum wage is another issue that will require deft maneuvering, given the conservatives’ opposition to it and the Social Democrats’ insistence they will not participate in any government that does not guarantee fair pay for all workers in the form of a minimum wage.
“We respect that,” Hermann Gröhe, the general secretary of the Christian Democrats, told reporters. “But all the same, I think that these talks were important in terms of better understanding the other side.”
Andrea Nahles, the Social Democrats’ general secretary, said Monday that the two sides were exploring a model used in Britain, where the government appoints an independent body to recommended a national wage rate, as way to reach a compromise on the issue.
Although Ms. Merkel’s conservatives won 41.5 percent of the vote on Sept. 22, far more than any other party, they still fell five seats short of a governing majority. If they form a coalition with the Social Democrats, who won 25.7 percent of the vote, that would leave the Greens, with 8.4 percent, as the main opposition force, along with the Left Party.
