Heading Toward a Grand Coalition?

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Social Democratic Party (SPD) chief Franz Müntefering have ruled it out. Many in the party, also fail to see the common ground. But now there's increasing talk by some ministers in the Schröder administration that after expected general election on September 18, the unthinkable may just become reality -- a grand coalition with the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU).

A number of senior Social Democrats backtracked on previous statements and came out in support of the idea of a grand coalition -- if everything else fails. Social Democrat Labor and Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement said it would be no sin to enter a grand coalition. He called it a reasonable democratic option and one which could open up new opportunities to reform the country.

Speaking in the same vein, Social Democrat Finance Minister Hans Eichel insisted that a grand coalition was definitely not beyond his imagination. He claimed that both the Social Democrats and the opposition conservatives had an interest in cutting the country's gaping budget deficit and saw opportunities to cut obsolete state subsidies together. Interior Minister Otto Schily has also joined the list, saying on German public television on Monday that should the election end with the defeat of the current center-left coalition, then the party shouldn't "rule out the option of a grand coalition."

Criticism from coalition partner, left

The odd-man out in the grand coalition constellation is naturally the SPD's current junior coalition partner, the Green party.

Greens' co-chair Krista Sager told the Berliner Zeitung that a possible CDU-SPD coalition was the "stupidest common denominator." She also said that she wasn't surprised that some Social Democrats were "grasping for straws."

The party's other co-leader, Reinhard Bütikofer, attacked the utterances of the ministers, saying to the Leipziger Zeitung that they should then tell the voters how much they want to raise the VAT, whether they want to implement an unfair health care system and whether German soldiers should be sent to Iraq.

The speaker of the SPD's left-wing, Michael Müller, believes such talk is premature at this point of the campaign.

"I think that people like Wolfgang Clement and Hans Eichel should be a little more careful and restrained with regard to coalitions," Müller said.

Polls point to grand coalition

The resistance of the Greens and some within the SPD cannot cover up the results from the most recent opinion polls. The new socialist Left Party is gaining momentum, taking away votes from the SPD.

Also, German voters, at one time anxious for a new government, seem to be getting cold feet. For the first time since February, the CDU and their potential partners form the Free Democratic Party (FDP) no longer tallied more than 50 percent in opinion polls.

FDP chair Guido Westerwelle, who would like to avoid talk of grand coalition, is instead talking up his imagined worst-case scenario.

"The alternative to a CDU-FDP coalition isn't a grand coalition," he told the tabloid Bild, "but rather a leftist majority in the German parliament."