German SPD leaders aim to improve on coalition deal with Merkel

GERMANY - Leading members of Germany’s Social Democrats vowed on yesterday to press for improvements to a coalition blueprint they have agreed with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, seeking to win over skeptical party members who can torpedo the agreement.

Social Democrat (SPD) leaders must sell the deal to party members before a congress on Jan. 21 at which delegates vote on the agreement, clinched on Friday after 25 hours of exploratory talks. Only then can they move ahead with formal negotiations. “Negotiations are a different ball game to exploratory talks,” Malu Dreyer, premier in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate and an SPD deputy leader, told Funke Mediengruppe.

“We will try to achieve more successes in the coalition negotiations,” she added. An opinion poll conducted on Friday and published yesterday showed 56 percent of Germans welcomed the coalition blueprint, agreed after talks between Merkel’s conservatives and two smaller parties collapsed in November.

The survey by pollster Emnid for newspaper Bild am Sonntag showed 60 percent of Germans believed the SPD congress should give the goahead for coalition negotiations, with 30 percent opposed. Rank-and-file SPD members are still feeling bruised after the party’s worst election result last September since 1933.

Party leaders have their work cut out to persuade the delegates to give them the goahead for formal negotiations on forming a renewed version of their 2013-2017 “grand coalition” with Merkel’s conservatives. The party’s membership, in a contrary mood after the slump in the SPD vote in the Sept. 24 national election, is wary of its leaders’ calls for the party to step up for the sake of Germany’s stability.

On Saturday, delegates at a regional party conference in the eastern state of SaxonyAnhalt voted 52-51 against pursuing negotiations on a grand coalition despite an impassioned plea by former party leader Sigmar Gabriel to back the deal.

(REUTERS)