Germany: Formation new Government; Merkel and Schulz aim to wrap up initial talks by mid-January – by Janosch Delcker

Angela Merkel’s conservatives and Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats want to wrap up their first inner-circle talks on forming Germany’s next coalition government by January 12, in what will be the chancellor’s last chance to form a stable government.

Top party officials from Merkel’s CDU, its Bavarian sister party the CSU, and Schulz’s SPD met Wednesday to discuss the timeline of the talks. They agreed exploratory talks would begin on January 7, with negotiators hoping to present the results to their party faithful five days later. Schulz

had tweeted Tuesday that he did not expect the talks to take off until after a CSU party summit on January 6.

“It was a good conversation in an atmosphere based on trust,” the three parties said in a joint statement about the meeting.

Read more: Merkel and Schulz aim to wrap up initial talks by mid-January – POLITICO

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel moves left as German politics realign

Earlier this year, with the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming off a string of regional election triumphs, most observers expected Angela Merkel to become more conservative. Some within her own parliamentary bloc indeed demanded she do just that. But the opposite has happened. If anything, the chancellor and the CDU-CSU have maneuvered further left.

Part of the reason is the dictates of electoral numbers. The results of the September 24 national election meant that, with the extremes of the AfD and the Left party being deemed off-limits, Merkel's only viable coalitions involve either the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) or the left-wing environmentalist Greens. There is no non-left path to power.

But changes to political culture and Merkel's own personal inclinations have also encouraged realignment and effectively shifted the center further to the left. It was part of the accepted wisdom in Germany in the last 30 years that the conservatives' natural allies were the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), which has leaned towards the conservatives as coalition partner since the early 1980s, but had been in a coalition with the SPD before that.

Read more: Chancellor Angela Merkel moves left as German politics realign | In Depth | DW | 24.11.2017