Germany: Merkel wrestles with election fallout as coalition talks collapse

Angela Merkel is in trouble. Serious trouble. Negotiations to form the next German government have collapsed dramatically. Quite where the chancellor, and indeed Germany, go from here is anything but certain.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Although the Christian Democrats (CDU) performed poorly in the federal election of September 24 (gaining just 32.9% of the vote), the post-election expectations were nonetheless clear. Merkel would get representatives from the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria (CSU) and two smaller parties (the liberal FDP and the Greens) around a table and, over time and at their own pace, they would knuckle down and form Germany’s first “Jamaica Coalition” – so-named as the parties’ colours are the same as those on the Caribbean island’s flag.

Those expectations have now gone up in smoke. The FDP walked out. Christian Lindner, the FDP’s leader, claimed that there simply wasn’t enough common ground for the parties to draw up a coalition agreement that everyone could sign up to. “Better not to govern at all than to govern badly,” as he dramatically put it.

Tough choices

Where to now? Essentially, German politicians have three options.

First, there is another plausible majority in the German parliament. Merkel’s Christian Democrats could look to govern with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). The parties have a majority in parliament and they have experience of working together. Indeed, they did that in the four year period from 2013-2017.
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