Angela Merkel joins calls for new election

Tuesday, 21/11/2017 22:08
On November 20th, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for new election after coalition talks between German parties collapsed over the weekend.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Photo: AFP/VNA)

While Chancellor Merkel insisted that she would not step down, she also suggested that calling a new election would be preferable to leading a government that must survive vote-to-vote without a majority in the German parliament.

“I do not have a minority government in my planning, but now we have to wait for the next few days and the road to new elections is one way,” Ms Merkel said.

Merkel expressed her regrets over the FDP’s decision to withdraw from coalition talks.

"We believed we were on a path where an agreement could have been reached," Ms Merkel told reporters in Berlin.

Germany's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has urged the political parties to reconsider their positions and make it possible to form a new government.

“We now face a situation that we haven’t had in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, so in nearly 70 years,” Steinmeier told reporters after meeting Merkel. It is Steinmeier who will have to decide whether to pave the way for a minority government or call a new election.

Earlier, Chancellor Merkel spent four weeks haggling with the Free Democrats and the Greens on a new, untried governing coalition, until the Free Democrats walked out last Sunday night./.

Compiled by BTA

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