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Bloomberg

Angela Merkel yesterday approached her Social Democratic opponents as she began the search for a third-term coalition partner to leverage the biggest electoral victory in 23 years.
Merkel opened the jockeying saying she had "initial contact" with SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel.
She also allowed for negotiations with the smaller Greens party, which said it was ready to deal for a share of power in Europe's biggest economy.
"We are now open to talks," Merkel said at the Berlin headquarters of her Christian Democratic Union party. "Germany needs a stable government."

The chancellor heads into coalition-building with a strengthened hand the election gave her the biggest tally in any federal vote since Helmut Kohl's postreunification victory of 1990.
After campaigning on the economy and her handling of the euro zone crisis, she said three times at yesterday's news conference that she would not change course on European policy. Polls suggest that a Christian Democrat-SPD alliance, as Merkel headed in her first term from 2005 to 2009, has the most support from voters.
Merkel said the SPD's Gabriel asked her to hold off until his party leaders meet on Friday to consider coalition options.
Coalitions are the rule in the German political system and negotiations usually last from four to six weeks. Merkel faces compromise on taxes, wages, the transition to renewable energy from nuclear power and possibly on bailout policy.
"There is no foregone conclusion in the direction of a grand coalition," Gabriel said at his press conference an hour after Merkel's. "It's not for us to be concerned with forming a majority. That's up to Mrs Merkel. She has to say how she wants to make policy in Germany."
Merkel's Christian Democratic bloc fell five seats short of a majority in the 630-seat lower house of parliament, leaving it in need of a partner after voters threw out her Free Democratic allies. FDP leader Philipp Roesler, the vice-chancellor, quit his party post after overseeing its worst defeat since postwar West Germany's founding in 1949.


Merkel approaches rival Social Democratic Party about coalition

SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel

News

World

Angela Merkel yesterday approached her Social Democratic opponents as she began the search for a third-term coalition partner to leverage the biggest electoral victory in 23 years.
