SPD discuss alliance future
New leaders keen to renegotiate coalition pact with Merkel’s CDU at committee meeting
LEADERS of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) met yesterday to discuss the way forward for its governing coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and to set the goals they want to achieve as part of the controversial alliance.
The coalition’s future was thrown into doubt at the weekend after SPD members selected as their new leaders two little-known left-wingers, who are keen to renegotiate the agreement underpinning the current German government.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has rejected the idea of fundamentally changing the coalition deal.
There had been speculation that the new SPD leaders could quickly withdraw the party from the alliance, but that has since been downplayed.
The gathering yesterday of the SPD’s enlarged executive committee was the first time the new leaders, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans,
met top representatives from the party’s parliamentary group and ministers from the SPD ranks. Information on the meeting of the committee, which has around 40 members, was not expected to be made public.
Sebastian Hartmann, the chairperson of the SPD in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, said before the talks that the coalition still had a lot of work to complete under the existing agreement.
“More will be added given the current situation,” he said. “There is quite a bit on the table.”
The committee had wanted to prepare a proposal for the SPD’s annual conference, which gets under way on Friday in Berlin. Delegates have to sign off on the new leadership team and will help decide the party’s and coalition’s future course.
But it became clear at the committee meeting that a draft of the party conference proposal could not be completed, sources said. Several participants expressed confidence, however, that a common stance would be found.
Deputy SPD leader Ralf Stegner said he was confident that a “good, substantive foundation for talks with the CDU” would be laid at the party conference.
Hartmann said “real” work would done in the coming days. He added that “everything that is relevant for our country” had been discussed at the meeting, from public investments to climate action.
Most people do not expect a decision on the future of the coalition to be taken at the party conference.
“There will not be the question asked: ‘Are we staying in the grand coalition, yes or no?’ Instead, the likely outcome is... that we agree what the core demands are that will be made here,” SPD lawmaker Karl Lauterbach told the broadcaster ZDF.
Deputy parliamentary leader Achim Post called for a level-headed approach to the question of the coalition’s future.
“I am very much in favour of now discussing these issues calmly and without hasty conclusions – within the SPD and then with our coalition partner,” he said.
SPD lawmaker Bernd Westphal noted that a lot had been achieved within the coalition and warned his party against leaving government.
“As an opposition party, you can only make promises, but not do anything,” he said. |