Merkel Backs Coalition With German SPD as Hard Bargaining Looms
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Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germany’s opposition Social Democrats to get serious about signing on as the junior partner in her third-term government, saying the time to dwell on policy differences is over.
“I found it pointless” in previous talks with the SPD and the Greens party “to list all the issues that divide us,” Merkel said in Hanover yesterday in her first speech since winning German elections on Sept. 22. “It’s much more fruitful in my view to talk about how we carry out the mandate from voters. That’s what guides me in the talks on the formation of the next government, the formation of a grand coalition” with the SPD.