Germany’s SPD denies agreeing coalition talks with Angela Merkel but says all options open

The leader of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) said on Friday he ruled out no option in helping to form a new government but stressed that a re-run of the outgoing “grand coalition” with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives was not a done deal.

Germany, Europe’s political and economic powerhouse, has been without a government since a Sept. 24 national election.

Merkel, her own political future on the line after 12 years at the helm, is making overtures to the center-left SPD – her partner in government over the past four years – after her bid to form a three-way coalition with two smaller parties failed.

The SPD, which had wanted to go into opposition after suffering its worst post-World War Two election result, fears its own distinctive identity and policy ideas will again be smothered in any tie-up with Merkel’s bigger center-right bloc.

“Regarding the formation of a new government, there was broad support for not ruling any option out,” SPD leader Martin Schulz said after party board discussions in Berlin.

Schulz, who held talks on Thursday evening with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Merkel and her Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer, denied he had agreed to a re-run of the “grand coalition” that has ruled Germany for the …read more