German SPD Presses Merkel for Tradeoffs to Seal Coalition Pact

• January 28 2018
• Patrick Donahue

Germany’s Social Democratic leader said he needs concessions from Chancellor Angela Merkel to sell party members on staying in government, raising the stakes as negotiators seek to finish a coalition pact within a week.

Germany’s Social Democratic leader said he needs concessions from Chancellor Angela Merkel to sell party members on staying in government, raising the stakes as negotiators seek to finish a coalition pact within a week.

Two days into talks to finally end the political deadlock in Europe’s biggest economy, party leaders aren’t just discussing SPD policy demands on labor rules, health care and migration. They’re also eyeing the party’s base, which will have the final say on any government platform in a member ballot.

“These are things on which we need to come together,” SPD head Martin Schulz said on ARD television on Sunday before sitting down with leaders of Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led bloc in Berlin. “The party conference has given us a task and I have to convince the SPD’s 440,000 members.”

More than four months after Merkel’s bloc won an inconclusive federal election, the chancellor faces a choice between starting her fourth term with a familiar junior partner, trying to govern without a parliamentary majority, or seeking a repeat election. The schedule for renewing the four-year-old “grand coalition” with the SPD by Feb. 4 is tight.

An SPD convention last week narrowly backed formal negotiations with Merkel after Schulz pledged to push through additional Social Democratic demands. Yet many in Merkel’s bloc, including her Christian Democratic Union’s sister party in Bavaria, are warning the SPD that there isn’t much leeway for concessions.

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“Our scope is very narrow,” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a Merkel ally who’s the CDU state premier of Saarland, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “I can’t imagine that the SPD wants to start from square one.” 

Both sides are trying to hold Germany’s political center after falling to historic post-World War II lows in the election. Underscoring the tension, some in the CDU-CSU bloc now accuse the SPD of seeking to reopen a 28-page  preliminary pact agreed during marathon talks on Jan. 12.

Facing a potential backlash from SPD members who reject a new partnership with Merkel, senior officials at the Jan. 21 convention said they want more: tighter rules for employers setting up temporary contracts, an alignment of doctors’ pay for privately and publicly insured patients, and an expansion of asylum seekers’ rights to bring family members to Germany.

Merkel sought to leave room for compromise, saying Friday that the preliminary agreement is an “outline.” Migration may be the hardest to solve, with Bavaria’s CSU virtually ruling out a renegotiation of the planned limits on refugee family members.

“We’re ready for a compromise, but we also expect movement” by Merkel’s bloc, Schulz told ARD.