WOUNDED MERKEL CLINGS TO POWER

Coalition sealed at last after poll mauling by Germany’s far-Right

ANGELA Merkel finally won the right to form her fourth government yesterday.

Six months after an indecisive election the Social Democrat Party (SPD) voted to join a coalition with her conservative bloc.

But Mrs Merkel still faces huge challenges to hold on to power.

She is under pressure from the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has profited from her decision to open Germany’s borders to more than a million migrants. The AfD will now form the opposition in parliament. A recent opinion poll showed its support overtaking the SPD’s for the first time.

September’s election left Mrs Merkel’s conservatives and the SPD with only 56 per cent of the seats in parliament – far short of their share last time.

And the inclusion in the coalition deal of a two-year review of the new government’s progress is widely seen as giving the SPD an escape route should it want one. ‘If the Social Democrats continue to fall in the polls, then the point will come at some stage when they say “We must get out of the government”,’ said Nils Diederich, a politics professor at the Free University in Berlin.

Two thirds of the 464,000 SPD members voted ‘yes’ to the deal, an official said.

The party had been split between its leadership, which backed joining the coalition, and its radical youth wing, which did not.

In power since 2005, Mrs Merkel helped steer the European Union through the financial crisis and debt crisis, but her authority was dented by her 2015 decision to open Germany’s borders to so many migrants.

Just last week she fought off a rebellion in her Christian Democratic Union party by bringing a younger generation into her cabinet and paving the way for new leadership.

Her success at finally securing a coalition deal was hailed last

‘Fought off a rebellion’

night by international leaders, including Theresa May. ‘Both leaders looked forward to the formation of a new German government and to continuing to work closely together,’ said a Downing Street spokesman.

French president Emmanuel Macron called the SPD’s decision ‘good news for Europe’.

His spokesman added: ‘France and Germany will work together on new initiatives in the coming weeks to bring the European project forward.’

Stung by their worst post-war results, the SPD had initially ruled out another four years of coalition with Mrs Merkel.

But after Mrs Merkel’s attempt to cobble together a government with two smaller parties failed, the SPD relented.

With the party riven over its way forward, its leadership promised its members the final say on any coalition deal.