Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz has been looking for a fitting name for the government coalition he wanted to build.
The negotiators from Merz’s Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party who are in talks with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to form a coalition have reportedly been encouraged to think about novel ways to call their upcoming union.
“With these narrow majorities in parliament you cannot really call the planned coalition a ‘grand coalition’ anymore,” Merz told German tabloid Bild on March 23.
Merz suggested several possible alternative designations. “Perhaps ‘black-red working coalition’ or ‘coalition of new beginnings and renewal’,” the CDU leader suggested.
He said he was optimistic that the potential partners would find a suitable name. “Now it’s all about the content,” he concluded.
The negotiation teams were expected to hand in their choices by the afternoon of March 24.
As reported by German newspaper Welt on March 24, there were still major areas of disagreement regarding the coalition, especially over taxation and migration.
While the CDU wanted to lower corporate tax, the SPD demanded an increase of the top income tax rate. Furthermore, there was strong resistance from within the SPD against Merz’s election promise of a noticeably tougher migration policy.
Some commentators now saw the alternative of a minority government between SPD, The Greens party and The Left party as a more probable scenario.
Historically, coalitions between the German Conservatives and Social Democrats have been referred to as “grand coalitions” as they encompassed the greater majority of MPs.
The first Grand Coalition under CDU’s then-chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger lasted from 1966-1969, when the CDU and SPD accounted for 90 per cent of German MPs between them.
In recent years both CDU and SPD have haemorrhaged voters, the SPD due to the rise of The Greens on the Left, the CDU due to the emergence of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
During the second, third, and fourth Grand Coalitions – all under then-chancellor Angela Merkel – the two parties’ joint share of MPs fell from 73 per cent in 2005 to 56 per cent after the 2018 elections.
In the current Bundestag, the main chamber of German parliament, the CDU and SPD together have a majority of only 52 per cent – only 12 seats above the necessary minimum of 316 MPs.
Since Merz has stood firm on the CDU’s “cordon sanitaire” policy of rejecting any form of co-operation with AfD, the not-so-grand coalition is now the only two-party government coalition with a majority possible.
The term “grand coalition” is also unfitting in another way as it has usually denoted that the two biggest parties entered a governing agreement. In the latest February 23 election, AfD received more seats in the Bundestag than the SPD: 152 compared to the Social Democrats’ 120.
