Germany's SPD Agrees To Exploratory Govt Talks With Merkel

Germany's Social Democrats agreed Friday to open exploratory talks on building a government with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives

Berlin, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Dec, 2017 ) :Germany's Social Democrats agreed Friday to open exploratory talks on building a government with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, taking Europe's biggest economy a small step closer towards a new coalition.

The leader of Germany's second biggest party SPD, Martin Schulz, said he and other leading Social Democrats would meet Merkel next Wednesday to draw up a timetable on talks, due to start in early January.

But he stressed that his party had no plans to simply sign up to extending a lease on the right-left "grand coalition" that has governed Germany since 2013. Merkel has repeatedly said she wants a "stable government" -- shorthand for a grand coalition -- but Schulz insisted that cooperation could take "different forms".

"There are many different models of what a stable government could be," Schulz told journalists after huddling with the SPD's top brass. "We want another culture of governance in our country. It will not be 'go on as before', it won't be a continuation of the grand coalition in the form as we knew it," he said.

Addressing the annual congress of her Bavarian allies CSU, Merkel welcomed the SPD's decision to open talks, and said she has "great respect for the path that the party has chosen to take" since the September elections. Nevertheless, she shot down the SPD's call for a universal public health insurance system, saying "it won't work".