Daily Management Review

Germany on the brink of political chaos


02/06/2018


The Germans do not understand why there is no new government in Germany, while there has been almost 4 months after the election. The problem is that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party members failed to complete the coalition talks with the Social Democrats Martin Schulz by the evening of Sunday. Yet, they assured that they had made "significant progress" and "will continue the dialogue on Monday," but no one believes in these assurances: 71% of Germans do not understand why it takes so long to form a government.



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It is worth paying attention to the comments of Eurointelligence on the results of the survey: the agreement is not questioned, but the ratification raises doubts.

There is no doubt that the SPD and the CDU/CSU would ever come up with a coalition agreement. It remains to be doubted whether the members of Merkel ‘s SPD will agree. The latest polls can explain why the SPD management is now desperately trying to make a deal.

"The support of the CDU/CSU remains at 33%. However, the share of support for the two biggest parties will be only 51% after the merger." In this survey, we take into account a margin of errors, which results in a large coalition arithmetically impossible. We have already seen this in the Netherlands; a similar situation may occur in Italy in the beginning of March. Then, tiny parties may become inadequately influential. AfD gained 14%, which is only 4 points behind the SPD, this gap is also within standard deviation of the surveys. The remaining three parties gain 10-11% ", says Eurointelligence’s report.

Despite the fact that the SPD management could probably support a large coalition based on their own personal interests, SPD members have different reasons. They cannot calmly watch that the MPs, who could hardly obtain a seat in the last elections, will need to struggle for their place once again and probably lose the fight. Also, Martin Schultz and Sigmar Gabriel might need to search another job.

SPD activists are opposing a large coalition and split among the electorate of the party. We saw the results of the polls: 60/40 and 50/50. But voters do not have to be representatives of party members or activists. The results of the referendum are really uncertain; the possibility of deviation is, in particular, underestimated on financial markets,  .

Eurointelligence’s report notes that the SPD and Merkel now nearly completely agree with each other. Such a "system of partners" lowers the party’s position. It also affects members of the CDU and CSU.

For instance, Merkel stretched a point for Schultz, adopting the statement that the ESM should be brought into line with EU legislation. But this step is attacked by members of the CDU, CSU and other parties.

Merkel downgraded the rating of the SPD and the Greens in a situation related to the use of diesel fuel. She and Schultz also caused a massive blow to the SPD’s reputation with their stubborn position on migrants.

This coalition agreement pursues one goal - to keep Merkel and Schultz near the throne. They want to maintain their political privileges, such as, for example, free limousines.

source: zerohedge.com