A week after the vote for the federal elections, it is still uncertain with which majority the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will obtain her third reappointment by the Bundestag. To date, the only two possible coalitions, the one with the ecologists or the one with the social democrats, still seem to be a long way off. But times are tight. By the end of October the new Bundestag will have to be convened and by then the new coalition will have to be ready.
To date, the social democratic party, divided between those in favor and against, remains hesitant and sets as a condition the involvement of the base of the party on every single point negotiated in the negotiations. The worried minds of the Social Democrats turn to the 2005-2009 legislature, in which the SPD collapsed in the polls and finally also in the polls for having approved, together with the Conservatives, unpopular measures such as the increase in the VAT rate and the raising of the retirement age at 67 years.
After the withdrawal from the leadership of the party of the candidate for Chancellery, Peer Steinbrück, the federal leaders have nevertheless unanimously given their availability for an initial meeting with the opponents in order to probe the possibility that real and proper negotiations can be opened for the formation of a coalition programme. Some Christian Democrat exponents, including the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, have already floated the hypothesis of a compromise that includes increases in the tax burden and in particular an upward adjustment of the highest marginal income tax rate.
The proposal has unleashed a flurry of conflicting reactions in the CDU/CSU. In particular, the Bavarian Christian Socialists, who emerged particularly strengthened from the polls, together with various Christian Democrat exponents including the Minister of Labor Ursula von der Leyen and the new group leader in the Bundestag Volker Kauder, categorically refuse to approve a coalition pact which provides for increases taxes of all kinds. This would in fact be the first broken promise of Mrs. Merkel's party, which in its electoral program had excluded a tax increase for households and businesses.
In an info-graphic that appeared in the conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in any case there seem to be many other points of disagreement between the Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists: from the minimum wage to the elimination of the subsidy for mothers who intend to bring up their children at home without send them to kindergarten (so-called Betreuungsgeld). It also seems complicated to reach an agreement with the Greens, who, according to an interview with the now former leading candidate Juergen Trittin, consider greater investments in renewable sources, the minimum wage, an increase in resources for education and research and, finally, the creation of universal health insurance for all German citizens able to solve the financial problems of health insurance companies.
In short, while social democrats and ecologists do not seem willing to fall back on a less radical agenda, the Cdu/Csu intends to undertake not to lose the more than two million votes coming from the liberal galaxy. In other words, instead of converging, the parties that should be able to govern together until 2017 seem to be drifting apart for now.
