Martin Schulz’s speech greeted with sarcastic applause and ovations for party leader’s criticsGermany has inched a step closer to forming a new government after the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) gave its lukewarm endorsement for a renewed Angela Merkel-led “grand coalition”.
At a special SPD congress in Bonn that welcomed a speech by the party’s leader,Martin Schulz, with sarcastic applause and saw standing ovations for his fiercest critics, or 56% of the party’s delegates voted in favour of moving on to the second and final stage of coalition talks with Merkel’s centre-apt Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The leadership of Merkel's Christian Democrats will gather in Berlin tonight to discuss the outcome of the SPD party conference,and will nearly certainly give green light to budge on to the next stage of the coalition talks, which will likely start on Tuesday.
Merkel and Schulz's parties will then spend the next two to three weeks thrashing out a coalition agreement, and with the start of the carnival season,12 February, mooted as a deadline for the second round of talks.[br]
Once the coalition treaty has been finalised, and there is one final hurdle: a vote for all of the SPD's 443000 members. The voting process could take as long as three weeks and could potentially unravel weeks of negotiations and throw both the political futures of Martin Schulz and Angela Merkel into doubt.
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Source: theguardian.com