FRANKFURT:

Coalition

“It’s my wish that the current partners in the coalition government can get together again,” Kauder told the regional Suedwest Presse newspaper referring to the SPD and the conservatives.

Schulz is due to meet President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a former SPD lawmaker and foreign minister, at 1400 GMT. Steinmeier is trying to help facilitate a coalition government and avoid fresh elections.

Schulz is then expected to consult senior party members at the SPD’s Berlin headquarters. Changing course and teaming up with Merkel’s conservatives again could require a change of leadership at the SPD — an outcome unlikely before, at least, a party conference on Dec 7-9.

Kauder said Germany needed a government to provide leadership in Europe.

“Europe is waiting for a Germany capable of acting so that it can finally respond to the questions raised by French President (Emmanuel) Macron. The economically strongest country in Europe cannot show itself as a political dwarf,” he said.

Kauder was referring to Macron’s call for fiscal reforms to strengthen the euro zone.

Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, has long been a bastion of stability in the EU, and officials in Brussels and Paris fear months of political uncertainty could harm plans to reform euro zone governance and EU defence and asylum policies.

Merkel, who remains acting chancellor until a government is agreed, has said she would prefer to work with the SPD, but if that option fails, she would favour new elections over an unstable minority government.

Another election would also provide no speedy resolution of the crisis.

Under Germany’s constitition, the president could call another election only after Merkel had lost several votes in the Bundestag — a process that could take several months.

Also: Germany spy agencies should have the authority to digitally strike back against cybercriminals, the president of Germany’s new cyber security agency Zitis told Der Spiegel newsmagazine.

“As a citizen I expect that our government remains able to act even in the face of new digital threats,” the magazine on Wednesday quoted Wilfried Karl as saying in an interview.

Zitis was set up earlier this year to help develop information technology (IT) tools to fight cybercrime and track the communications of potential terrorists.

Karl made his comments a month after top German intelligence officials urged lawmakers to give them greater legal authority to “hack back” in the event of cyber attacks from foreign powers.

German officials have blamed APT28, a Russian hacker group said linked to Moscow, for the May 2015 hack of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, and other cyber attacks aimed at political groups, individuals or institutions.

“Wouldn’t it be desirable to at least destroy data and documents on the thieves’ servers?” the Zitis chief said.

But he said he believed a new proposed US bill that could make it legal for companies to retaliate against hackers went too far.