Germany's Merkel embarks on new talks to form government
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel embarked Sunday on talks with the center-left Social Democrats on forming a new government, with leaders stressing the need for speed as they attempt to break an impasse more than three months after the country's election.
death,” wrote contributor Fabrice Nicolino in a column last week.
“And this in the heart of Paris and in conditions which do not honor the French republic. Do we still have a laugh? Yes,” he added.
The magazine pays between €1.0-1.5 million (1.2-1.8 million dollars) in security costs annually to protect its offices which are at a secret location, its editor Riss wrote.
Sales meanwhile have fallen sharply since a wave of popular support following the bloodshed.
Company revenues fell to €19.4 million in 2016, down from more than 60 million in 2015, according to figures first reported by the BFM news channel and confirmed to AFP by the magazine.
Its journalists and editors still regularly receive death threats and the magazine courted fresh controversy in November with a frontpage on the Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan who has been accused of sexually assaulting women.
The magazine also regularly mocks Christian and Jewish leaders as well as politicians of all stripes.
Two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, another French extremist took hostages at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris, killing five people before elite police raided the premises and shot him dead.
Anti-terror magistrates investigating the incidents are expected to finalize their probe in the next few months but have been unable to determine how the Charlie Hebdo killers — Cherif and Said Kouchi — coordinated with the supermarket shooter, Amedy Coulibaly.
Leaders aim to decide by Friday whether there's enough common ground to move on to formal coalition negotiations. Whatever the result, it will be a while yet before a new administration is in place to end their worst post-war election result to go into opposition, so Merkel opened talks on the alternative coalition — which collapsed in November. The Social Democrats then reluctantly reconsidered their refusal to mull extending the "grand coalition" of Germany's biggest parties. Shortly before Christmas, Germany beat its previous record of 86 days — set in 2013 — for the time from an election to the swearing-in of a new government.
If the parties decide this week that they are prepared to open formal coalition negotiations, that will require approval Jan. 21 by a congress of the Social Democrats. Party leader Martin Schulz, Merkel's defeated challenger in September, may face a tough job convincing members who so far are deeply skeptical of being junior partners in another "grand coalition." Those negotiations would take weeks. Further, Social Democrat leaders have promised to hold a ballot of the full party membership on any coalition deal — taking several more weeks.
Possible stumbling blocks include migration: the conservatives want to maintain a block that bans migrants granted a status short of full asylum from bringing their closest relatives to Germany, while the Social Democrats want to end it. The two sides could also clash over the Social Democrats' call to reform the health insurance system and their differing ambitions for the European Union. Schulz recently advocated aiming for a federal "United States of Europe" by 2025, which goes too far for conservatives.
If the parties failed to form a coalition, the only remaining options would be for Merkel's conservatives to lead an unprecedented minority government, or a new election. Schulz has said some form of support for a minority government is an option for his party, but Merkel has made clear she wants a coalition. Polls so far suggest that a new election would produce a similar result to the last one.
The road to either a minority government or a new election involves President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who so far has opposed a new vote. The German Parliament cannot dissolve itself and Merkel cannot call a confidence vote as a caretaker chancellor. Steinmeier would first have to propose a chancellor to Parliament, who must win support from a majority of all lawmakers to be elected. If that fails, Parliament has 14 days to elect a
Last month also saw him suffer a blow when his vice president Cyril Ramaphosa, who campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket, was elected ANC president after seeing off Zuma’s former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
Ramaphosa is set to distance candidate of its own choosing, again by an absolute majority. If that also fails, Steinmeier could choose to appoint a candidate who wins the most votes but falls short of a majority — or dissolve Parliament. An election would then have to be held within 60 days. himself from Zuma as the ANC seeks to retain its absolute majority in next year’s general elections even if the latter still retains a constituency of support within the movement after 10 years as its leader.