Merkel to lead Germany
2005-10-10 12:12
Berlin - German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder relinquished his seven-year grip on power Monday at the head of Europe's biggest economy in favour of a coalition government led by his conservative archrival Angela Merkel.
His Social Democrats said they had massively approved a deal with Merkel's Christian Democrats that would allow her to become the country's first female chancellor at the head of a left-right administration.
Its first task will be to revive the battered economy, crippled by sluggish growth and chronically high unemployment currently more than 11%.
Germany's two biggest parties will share cabinet seats fairly equally, but it remains unclear how the division of responsibilities will affect Merkel's ability to run what is likely to be a fractious government.
The deal was hammered out amid intense negotiations in a three-week battle for supremacy after inconclusive September 18 general elections.
Cabinet posts
According to reports citing sources close to the SPD, the centre-left party will take the key ministries of foreign affairs, finance, labour and justice, as well as environment, aid and co-operation, health and transport.
The CDU and its Bavarian sister CSU would also have eight cabinet posts - Merkel as chancellor, a minister of state at the chancellery, and the economy, interior, defence, agriculture, education and family ministries.
CSU leader Edmund Stoiber, whose Bavaria is Germany's richest state, would run the economy ministry with enlarged responsibility on European policy,
If Merkel is indeed confirmed chancellor, it will cap a remarkable rise for the daughter of a Protestant pastor who moved to communist East Germany in the 1950s.
She would be the first woman at the head of a major European country since Edith Cresson's brief stint as French premier in the early 1990s.
Schroeder, 61, swept to power in 1998 in a coalition with the Greens on the back of a demand for change after 16 years of conservative rule under Helmut Kohl.
Schroeder's popularity slipping
But despite his charisma, he lost the confidence of voters after failing to bring down unemployment or to dispel a sense of malaise stifling the national mood.
Seven years on, with his government struggling to push through sweeping but deeply unpopular structural reforms to revive the economy, his party won just 34.2% of the vote in an election he had called a year early in a bid to secure a fresh mandate for his controversial reforms.
With neither the CDU, which finished four seats ahead of the SPD, nor the Social Democrats able to form a government with their preferred partners, both leaders claimed they had a mandate to run the country.
Schroeder refused to step aside, which some observers saw as an attempt to cling to power and by others as a political poker game to ensure the best deal for his party in a coalition government.
Germany has not had a coalition of the country's two biggest parties since the 1960s.