Moving Ahead: Party Leaders Agree to Start Coalition Talks

AFP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel smiles as she leaves successful exploratory coalition-builidng talks on Thursday afternoon.

Coalition talks can now officially begin as soon as next Wednesday after Chancellor Merkel's conservatives and their rival Social Democrats agreed on Thursday to move forward on building a governing coalition together.

Coalition talks can now officially begin as soon as next Wednesday now that Chancellor Merkel's conservatives and their rival Social Democrats have agreed to move forward on building a governing coalition together.

ANZEIGE

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) have agreed to recommend taking up official talks to form a coalition government, party leaders said on Thursday afternoon. "Beginning coalition negotiations makes sense," SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel told the press after the two parties concluded their third round of exploratory discussions. "We believe that we can find a common basis with the CDU."
Though no concrete compromises on the parties' differences have yet been made, the SPD delegation decided unanimously to move forward with coalition talks, he added.
The next meeting could be as soon as next Wednesday if both party committees agree on taking the next step in creating a so-called grand coalition.
Horst Seehofer, head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said he was also quite happy with the result of Thursday's meeting.

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