Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Germany's Schulz Has Little Choice But to Compromise

The likeliest result of September's elections is the most familiar one.

November 28, 2017 at 7:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Fatal attraction.
Photographer: Herby Sachs/WDR/ARD via Getty Images

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German politics is no longer boring, but that doesn't mean German political outcomes shouldn't be. The likeliest result of last September's election is the most familiar one: another "grand coalition" between Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats (SPD). It would be the third one since 2005.

This is a case of natural and perhaps fatal attraction between the two parties operating in the center of German politics. Long term, it's undermining both of them. But that’s not necessarily Merkel’s priority at this point in her political career. If the goal is four more years of stability -- and that’s what Merkel favors, as do many German voters -- the CDU and SPD represent the only viable combination that can govern all of Germany.