Ray Fleming15/10/2013 00:00
TW
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IMAGINE that the Conservatives had defeated Labour by four parliamentary seats at the last election and the two parties had agreed to form a coalition in the country's best interest, but with the condition that Tony Blair should be replaced by Michael Howard as prime minister while Labour took the lion's share of key ministerial posts. An unlikely scenario, perhaps, but it is more or less what has happened in Germany: the Christian Democrats (CDU), with a majority of four in the Bundestag, will form the government with Frau Angela Merkel as Chancellor in place of Gerhard Shroder while his Social Democrats (SPD) will take eight cabinet posts to the CDU's five. Most governments in post-war Germany, whether CDU or SPD, have been formed with coalition partners from one of the smaller parties, although there was a “Grand Coaltion” of the CDU and SPD in the 1960s. This time, with the leading parties so closely matched numerically, a coalition with just one minor party would not have been practical so the deal announced yesterday was done. It will not be popular with everyone in the two parties, especially among those in Frau Merkel's CDU who had expected ministerial preferment but now see the best posts going to the SPD.

But Frau Merkel was probably right when she said that there was “no alternative to a reform course in Germany”. The coalition agreement has to be approved by each of the parties and by the Bundestag, a process which may take as long as one month during which there is certain to be a great deal of infighting. It is in Germany's and Europe's interests that the new government can get down to work as soon as possible. The first task will to get the stagnant economy moving and unemployment reduced from the 11 per cent where it has been stuck for some time. Meanwhile there is speculation about Herr Schroder's future ranging from spending more time with his family to taking over one of Russia's recently re-nationalised companies for his friend Vladimir Putin. For her part, however tough the task she faces, Frau Merkel knows that she has already made history as her country's first woman, and first East German, Chancellor.