Merkel averts pre-election rebellion

Chancellor not considering retirement: spokesman

BERLIN, April 15, (Agencies): Chancellor Angela Merkel averted a potentially embarrassing defeat in parliament when rebel members of her centre-right coalition accepted a compromise plan on Monday to require German companies to put more women on their boards.

The threat of a rebellion had loomed just five months before Germany holds an election in which Merkel will be trying to win a third term. Leading conservatives, including Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen, were threatening to break ranks and vote with opposition parties, convinced that voluntary pledges to appoint more women have proven inadequate.

CDU General Secretary Hermann Groehe said that under the compromise the CDU will include in its campaign platform a pledge obliging big firms to raise the proportion of women on supervisory boards to 30 percent in 2020.

In exchange for that pledge, coalition rebels agreed vote against the opposition’s measure to introduce a quota from 2018. The Bundestag lower house is due to vote on the measure on Thursday.

Groehe, who had previously rejected any set quota, said von der Leyen had agreed to the compromise. But the minister did not make any public statement.

The opposition-backed measure would require Germany’s 30 largest listed DAX companies to allot 20 percent of their board seats to women in 2018, with the quota rising to 40 percent in 2023.

It originated in the upper house of parliament, where the Social Democrats (SPD) and their Greens allies secured a majority earlier this year.

With the election looming and Merkel’s party far ahead in the polls, the centre-left opposition is looking for ways to upset her campaign.

Besides to the women’s quota, the left is planning to use its new majority in the Bundesrat to force votes on other issues that divide conservatives, including equal tax treatment for gay couples and subsidies for stay-at-home parents.

Merkel allies, led by parliamentary floor leader Volker Kauder, applied pressure on von der Leyen and other deputies who had spoken out in favour of the quota for women.

Challenged

Von der Leyen, one of the few members of the CDU who has openly challenged Merkel on policy issues in recent years, has long supported the so-called “Frauenquote” but had kept mum about how she would vote on Thursday. She was seen as the pivotal voice and all eyes were upon her.

Meanwhile, Merkel’s spokesman says there’s nothing to a media report that the German leader is thinking of stepping down before she reaches age 61 in 2015.

Current polls indicate Merkel is likely to return as chancellor after September elections, and retiring in 2015 would mean not serving a full four-year term.

The top-selling and influential Bild newspaper posed the question Monday of whether Merkel may be considering retirement then, quoting from an analysis done by one of their reporters in his new book.

But Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters that she was not considering such a move.

He says “it is self-evident that the chancellor is running in the elections for a full legislative period.”

In other news, Germany’s opposition Social Democrats (SPD) opened their election campaign on Sunday pledging victory in September despite polls that suggest their best hope of regaining power will be in a “grand coalition” under Angela Merkel.

Opinion polls have put

Peer Steinbrueck’s centre-left SPD well behind Merkel’s conservatives, and her personal popularity has soared to more than 60 percent while fewer than a third of Germans say they would prefer him as chancellor.

But Steinbrueck, who served as finance minister in the last Merkel-led “grand coalition” that led Europe’s biggest economy from 2005 to 2009, remained defiant about the party’s chances on Sept 22.

“I want to be chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,” Steinbrueck, 66, said at the party congress in Augsburg, reeling off a list of the SPD’s state election wins over Merkel’s centre right in the past three years.

“This government has nothing left on the shelves, just nice boxes in the shop window,” he said, and outlined a platform that stressed fair pay and pensions, affordable housing and more emphasis on job creation than Merkelstyle budget austerity.

Spirit

Klaus Wowereit, the popular SPD mayor of Berlin, said the party was in fighting spirit.

“The party is not demotivated, the mood is positive, even among those who are not natural Steinbrueck fans,” he said.

Steinbrueck himself has ruled out the possibility of serving with Merkel to avoid a repeat of 2009, when SPD disillusion with the grand coalition was blamed for its worst post-war election result of 23 percent.

One poll this week put the party back at that low level.

“The message from this party congress is a clear ‘yes’ for Red-Green and nothing else,” said SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, referring to the SPD and its Green allies in parliament.

But with Merkel’s current coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats, far from certain of passing the 5 percent threshold to win seats in the Bundestag, and the SPD and Greens ruling out an alliance with the hardline Left party, a new grand coalition is a possibility that pragmatists cannot discount.

“I still think Red-Green is more likely, but you have to think about the alternatives,” said one senior party member, who asked not to be named and was already thinking about what the SPD should demand in eventual coalition talks with Merkel.

The Greens, whose surging support will make them the third biggest party in the Bundestag lower house, are openly worried that the SPD is becoming resigned to a coalition with Merkel.

“They should remember that they emerged from the last one with 23 percent support,” said Greens leader Juergen Trittin.

Bernd Groeger, a party member from North-Rhine Westphalia, summed up the attitude of many in the rank-and-file.

“I personally wouldn’t welcome a grand coalition because it always hurts the party,” he said. “We lost credibility last time.”

Steinbrueck’s habit of speaking his mind in contrast with Merkel’s bland style once made him popular but there are now doubts as to whether he can lead Europe’s biggest economy.

He alienated the SPD’s left wing when he was discovered to have earned 1.25 million euros ($1.6 million) as an after-dinner speaker since leaving government in 2009.

The party faithful seem unconvinced: 48 percent of SPD members polled for a Sunday paper said they would have a better chance with another candidate, versus 44 percent who backed him.

“Being an agent provocateur once made him Germany’s most popular politician,” one SPD premier told Reuters. “But if he wants to be chancellor, he must change.”