Partner Search

Boosted by the highest approval ratings for any German chancellor since World War II, Angela Merkel on Wednesday, Sept. 12, probably didn't find it too difficult to praise her predecessor.

Talking about the "great success story" of Germany's economic recovery during a parliamentary budget hearing, Merkel gave credit to former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Agenda 2010 welfare reform program, which helped spark the current upswing.

Merkel's conciliatory gesture towards her former rival might have been meant to comfort Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD), who are now the junior coalition partner to the chancellor's Christian Democratic Union (CDU): According to a new survey for German magazine Stern, the SPD has dropped to 25 percent, while 40 percent of voters say they would choose the CDU.

While the next general election isn't scheduled to take place for another two years, all parties in parliament -- with the exception of the ostracized Left Party -- have openly begun to sound out potential coalition partners.

Getting cozy again

On Tuesday night, members of the CDU and the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who were in a coalition government from 1982 to 1998, met for a "joyful get-together," as CDU Secretary General Ronald Pofalla told reporters following the talks.

According to the Stern poll, the CDU, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the FDP would get 48 percent of votes in an election, compared to just 46 percent for SPD, Greens and the Left Party.

Pofalla and his FDP counterpart, Dirk Niebel, said that the strategic meeting had helped to create a basis of trust between the dream coalition partners, adding that the group had discovered many similarities as far as economic, finance and family policy were concerned.

Greens leader Reinhard Bütikofer, whose party served in a coalition with the SPD from 1998 until 2005, called the meeting "parliamentary folklore."

"I think that's a strange event that's taking place there," he told German public broadcaster Deutschlandradio on Wednesday.

But Bütikofer's party colleagues don't seem to think that it's such a bad idea to get an early start on talks with potential allies for 2009: Young SPD and Green parliamentarians have arranged to meet for dinner on Wednesday night.

First Jamaica, then Gabon?

Others are also rekindling talk about a possible coalition between conservatives, FDP and Greens -- nicknamed the Jamaica coalition because the parties' colors correspond to those in the flag of the Caribbean nation.

The latest suggestion for cooperation, however, comes from an FDP member, who has suggested that his party should merge with the Greens.

"The great project of a political center in Germany -- the establishment of a sustainable liberalism, the merger of FDP and Greens, could be launched in 2009," Jorge Chatzimarkakis, a European parliamentarian, told Stern.

Chatzimarkakis, who is a member of the FDP's national leadership, said that many people in both parties already agree on a wide range of issues. He added that the new party could get between 15 and 20 percent of votes and represent the reunification of the FDP's blue-yellow "old middle classes" with the Greens "new middle classes."

Brazil and Gabon have national flags that could serve as symbols.