Germany coalition talks break up for the night, due to resume Monday

(4 Feb 2018) Negotiations for an agreement on a new German government will continue on Monday morning, a spokesman for the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) said on Sunday evening. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the SPD had spent Sunday looking for a way to form a coalition, but negotiators will need at least one more day of discussions. "We've just jointly noticed in the high-level meeting that there are issues ahead of us where the parties are still apart, about which we will still have to talk, which we want to discuss thoroughly and with focus," Lars Klingbeil, the Social Democrats' general secretary, told journalists on Sunday evening. Klingbeil said while Sunday's talks had been very constructive, the two sides were still someway apart from reaching an agreement. A deal will require approval in a ballot of the SPD's members, many of whom are sceptical about renewing the alliance that has governed Germany since 2013 after a disastrous election result in September. Merkel's CDU, its Bavaria-only sister, the Christian Social Union, and the Social Democrats originally set Sunday as a deadline to wrap up negotiations, though they have budgeted two extra days as a precaution. Merkel's previous attempt to put together a government with two smaller parties collapsed in November. SPD leader Martin Schulz, who had previously ruled out renewing the "grand coalition" of Germany's biggest parties, then reversed course but still faces resistance from parts of his party. Failure to reach an agreement, or a deal's rejection by SPD members, would leave a minority government under Merkel or a new election as the only viable governing options. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/39b02cc995aaf68a4659fd7169a64bca Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork