German Greens end coalition talks with Merkel

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s environmentalist Greens ended
coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s conservatives on Friday,
making a “grand coalition” between her CDU party and Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats more likely.

The Greens said they saw no basis for cooperation with a
party they called “neo-liberal” and “anti-ecological.”

Merkel said her Christian Democrats would now focus on
talks with Schroeder’s center-left SPD aimed at forming a
coalition between the two biggest parties in parliament.

Germany’s political parties are holding initial talks with
each other to assess the viability of various coalition
governments after the country’s election on Sunday gave no
major party a majority with its preferred coalition partner.

Green party leaders Reinhard Buetikofer and Claudia Roth
said Sunday’s result showed there was no majority in Germany
for the conservatives’ “neo-liberal, radical market,
anti-ecological policies,”

“We see no chance of recommending further exploratory talks
to our party’s executive,” Buetikofer said.

With no party able to form a government, attention has
focused on the tortuous coalition negotiations, which are
expected to take several weeks at least and which some
observers have said could last until Christmas.

Until they are resolved, Schroeder will continue as
caretaker chancellor.

The Greens’ rejection of overtures from the CDU leaves a
grand coalition as the most likely outcome and greatly lessen
prospects of a so-called “Jamaica coalition” with the liberal
Free Democrats (FDP).

That option — named after the black, yellow and green
colors of the three parties, which match the colors of the
Jamaican flag — was already seen as an outside possibility
given the wide differences between the Greens and the other
two.

Merkel, speaking to reporters after the meeting with the
Greens, said the talks had been conducted in a cordial
atmosphere but that there was evidently no basis for further
meetings, at least for the moment.

She said the door had not been permanently shut to further
talks with the Greens at a later date.

“The option is definitely still open and we’re just going
to continue with the process,” she said.

Merkel and Schroeder met on Thursday for exploratory talks
and agreed to meet on Wednesday to continue discussions. Apart
from policy differences, they both insist that they would not
enter a coalition unless they are in charge as chancellor.

The talks came on the same day that a survey by the Emnid
poling institute which showed that 47 percent of Germans wanted
Merkel in the Chancellery against 44 percent who preferred
Schroeder.