Coalition logjam

The return of a "grand coalition" of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) took a step forward in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the five parties elected to state parliament are weighing their options in forming a government.

Hannelore Kraft, the Social Democrats' candidate for state premier, has taken up the challenge of forming a new government, after the failure of her preferred option - an alliance with the Green party - failed to win a majority. After talks with the socialist Left party broke down, Kraft said she hopes the business-minded Free Democrats (FDP) will reconsider their refusal to join a coalition with the SPD and Greens.

"We offered to have discussions with the FDP," she told newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "Yet the FDP has avoided their democratic responsibility."

Also possible is the return of the so-called "grand coalition" between SPD and CDU, which ruled the federal government from 2005 until last year's federal elections. But since the CDU won a marginally larger share of the vote in NRW, this alliance would damage Kraft's hopes of becoming state premier. This in turn would ruin the SPD's hopes of winning control of the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat, from the CDU-FDP federal government.

"We will conduct discussions [with the CDU] with absolute sincerity," Kraft said. "But it remains to be seen if we will ultimately agree on building a coalition government."

Because the SPD and CDU received an equal number of seats in the state parliament, it may also be possible that incumbent state Premier Juergen Ruettgers could retain his position in a grand coalition.

The North Rhine-Westphalia election, on May 9, was the first litmus test for Chancellor Angela Merkel's six-month-old CDU-FDP federal government. If the SPD is able to form a new coalition government in the state, it would rob Merkel's coalition of its control of the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, which represents the 16 federal states.

Few options

Talks that began after the election among the SPD, Greens and the Left party quickly collapsed due to the Left's extremist positions. If all coalition talks fail, there is the possibility of new elections being called in the state.

In an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Sunday, Social Democrat party head Sigmar Gabriel said he would not rule out a coalition with the CDU under Ruettgers, although he declined to list the party's conditions before talks began. But despite it being a difficult goal, he said he still favors a coalition with the Greens and FDP.

"That from my point of view would still be the best solution, if the FDP would be more sensible," he said.

Meanwhile, Guntram Schneider, the head of the North Rhine-Westphalia labor union federation, said a grand coalition with the CDU was still conceivable, even under a CDU state premier, as long as it was not Ruettgers. The important thing, Schneider said, was a stable government.

But from the point-of-view of the CDU and SPD, the most important thing is securing a majority in the Bundesrat. If the SPD can form a government in North Rhine-Westphalia without the CDU, it would break the conservative grip on the upper house, and seriously hinder Chancellor Merkel's legislative plans.

acb/gb/dpa/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Ben Knight