What’s in store for Germany’s grand coalition?

Hertie School Dean of Executive Education and Professor of Communication in Politics and Civil Society Andrea Römmele says that both parties in the grand coalition are currently mainly concerned with internal conflicts rather than focusing on the big picture.

“They are lacking a grand vision and a narrative,” she told ZDF’s heute journal.

In an interview on German radio Deutschlandfunk a few days earlier, Römmele said that the grand coalition has reached an impasse, adding that the ongoing dispute about pension reform might become a deciding factor for the survival of the coalition.

“On one hand, we have the substantive dispute about pension reform, which has now been reignited, but we also see a leadership crisis in both parties,” Römmele explains during her radio interview. “We also face the question if the SPD even wants to continue the grand coalition once they have elected their new leadership duo. There are multiple factors that leave the grand coalition in a massive imbalance.”

Listen to her comments on German TV ZDF here (in German): https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute-journal/heute-journal-vom-6-november-2019-100.html

Listen to the interview on Deutschlandfunk (in German).