Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) does not want to end the ruling "grand coalition" with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives for the sake of doing it, but the alliance needs to clear up some issues in order to stay viable, the party's incoming co-leader said Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th December, 2019) Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) does not want to end the ruling "grand coalition" with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives for the sake of doing it, but the alliance needs to clear up some issues in order to stay viable, the party's incoming co-leader said Thursday."We've always said that exiting the grand coalition was not an end in itself. No one can expect that a decision will be made today or tomorrow and that we will stay unconditionally in a coalition where a number of issues remain unresolved and need to be cleared up. It depends on the contents, rather than being a question of 'yes or no'," Norbert Walter-Borjans told reporters.
The SPD executive committee met earlier in the day to nominate Walter-Borjans and his running mate, Saskia Esken, as the party's co-leaders after they won the majority of votes during last week's leadership contest. The election result will be officially confirmed at the party congress on December 6-8.
Esken said at the press conference that the meeting with the party's leadership had been "very lively." She was very pleased, she said, with talks with lawmakers and regional party authorities that she described as going "in the right direction," including on the coalition deal.
