Merkel secures deal to form government

Chancellor returns to power, but in weakened coalition role after five months of negotiations

THE way was finally cleared for Angela Merkel to form a new government in Germany yesterday as the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) voted in favour of a coalition deal.

A postal vote of the SPD’S 463,000 members voted to keep Mrs Merkel in power by a healthy margin, with 66 per cent in favour and 34 per cent against.

The decision brings an end to months of political crisis in Germany. The vote was the last hurdle standing in Mrs Merkel’s way, and she will now be able to defy her critics and begin a fourth term as chancellor.

“I congratulate the SPD on this clear result and look forward to further cooperation for the good of our country,” she said in a statement.

Mrs Merkel will start what is almost certainly her final term as chancellor in a weakened position. She suffered heavy losses in September’s election and it took her five months to put together a new coalition – the longest it has taken in postwar German history.

But last week she successfully fought off an incipient rebellion in her own Christian Democrat party (CDU) by bringing a younger generation into her cabinet and paving the way for her eventual succession. And with yester- day’s vote she has seen off a considerably bigger grass roots rebellion within the SPD and can now count on the par- ty’s support in parliament.

However, she had to surrender control of key government departments, including the powerful finance ministry to get a deal.

The new “grand coalition” means the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AFD) is now the main opposition in parliament, which will give its MPS a platform Mrs Merkel and her allies would have preferred to deny them.

With the SPD in control of the finance, foreign and employment ministries, it is likely to be markedly different from Mrs Merkel’s previous administrations. “We now have clarity,” Olaf Scholz, the acting SPD leader, said. “The SPD will enter the government.”

But Mrs Merkel’s main coalition partner remains in disarray. The decision whether to join a new coalition has riven the SPD down the middle and claimed the scalp of Martin Schulz, its former leader, who negotiated the coalition deal only to be forced out by a deeply unhappy party base.

Mr Schulz is expected to become vice-chancellor and finance minister but has said he will not stand for the full-time SPD leadership.

Andrea Nahles, a former employment minister, is now favourite to take over the party after she successfully led the Yes campaign in the coalition vote. The decision over whether to join a new coalition was put to the SPD’S members in a postal ballot and there were doubts over which way the decision would go. The No camp mounted a Momentum-style campaign to sign up new members to vote against the deal.

In the end, the decision was much clearer than expected, but Kevin Kühnert, the head of the party youth wing and leader of the No campaign, vowed to continue his fight to change the party’s direction. “No SPD renewal without us. Tomorrow it begins,” he tweeted.

Mrs Merkel is not set to be formally voted in as chancellor until Mar 14, but she is expected to begin the work of forming a new government immediately.

After nearly six months of political stasis Germany finally has a new government, which turns out to be the same as the old one. Angela Merkel remains chancellor, and is on course to outlast even the 16 years that Helmut Kohl stayed at the top. Her CDU/CSU party continues as the main partner in a partnership with the left-of-centre SPD, whose members yesterday endorsed a reprise of the “grand coalition” that has twice governed Germany since 2005. By doing so, they overwhelmingly backed renewing an arrangement which has already caused their party immense damage.

The SPD’S performance at the elections in September was its worst since the war, and opinion polls show the social democrats, once a major force in German politics, now trailing the Right-wing populist party, the AFD. That weakness was probably a key factor in its membership’s decision: another general election could have seen it wiped out. Now it at least has four years to try to rebuild by showing competence in government.

The reshaped coalition reflects the German desire for political stability above all else; but the events of the past few months suggest that the dominance of the two mainstream parties might be over by the time of the next election. AFD have almost 100 MPS and have campaigned on issues such as Europe and immigration that still loom large in German politics.

The failure of the SPD leader Martin Schulz to secure a key post in the Cabinet after a backlash from his party has removed one of the most ardent European federalists from the mix. But it is unclear whether Mrs Merkel will agree to back President Macron’s integrationist reforms of the EU. The British government will hope that, freed from the worries of coalition building, she might now use her authority and influence to help engineer a pragmatic and mutually beneficial Brexit deal.