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Crumbling coalition

July 16, 2009

The northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein has plunged into a political crisis after Chancellor Merkel's conservatives voted to end their fraught coalition with the Social Democrats.

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Peter Harry Carstensen, premier of Schleswig-Holstein with conservative politician Johann Wadepfuhl
Conservatives Carstensen, right, and Johann Wadepfuhl, announced the end of the grand coalitionImage: AP

Schleswig-Holstein's conservative premier Peter Harry Carstensen said late on Wednesday that the 30 CDU state assembly members had voted unanimously to end the four-year-old coalition before the next election due in May 2010.

The move comes just 10 weeks before national elections in Germany.

Carstensen said lawmakers were expected to vote on the dissolution in the capital Kiel on Monday, and that he wanted to call an early election on Sept. 27 to coincide with the federal election.

Social Democrats to resist dissolution

However, the SPD has pledged to vote against the proposal for dissolution of the parliament. Without a two-thirds majority vote, the proposal will not succeed.

"The SPD will stick to the coalition agreement. There is no reason to dissolve the state assembly," the SPD's state leader Ralf Stegener told German television. "If the state premier doesn't think he can carry on, he can resign."

Premier Carstensen however said he had tried hard to work with the SPD and had informed his fellow Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel of the dire situation in the state.

"What I've gone through in the last weeks brings one to the edge," Carstensen said.

State coalition woes mirror those of federal government

Flags of the SPD and the CDU in front of the German parliament building in Berlin
Germany's grand coalition between the conservatives and Social Democrats has been strainedImage: dpa - Report

The two parties have ruled together in an awkward coalition since 2005. They have clashed over bonus payments to banking executives at the state-owned HSH Nordbank and malfunctions at the Kruemmel nuclear power plant.

Schleswig-Holstein's coalition woes mirrors bickering in the federal grand coalition and could signal an end to the CDU-SPD partnership after the election.

The deputy chairman of the CDU's federal parliamentary group, Wolfgang Bosbach, said threat of a stalemate in Schleswig-Holstein highlights the fact that Germany's two major parties are uncomfortable bedfellows.

"This is a signal for Berlin," Bosbach told the online edition of newspaper Handelsblatt. "The call for a new election shows that a grand coalition is not a permanent solution."

Merkel is appealing to voters to use September's federal election to dump the SPD and allow the CDU to form a coalition government with the liberal Free Democrats.

sp/dpa/AP/AFP

Editor: Neil King