Greens pull out of coalition talks with Merkel

BERLIN (AFP) ― The German Green Party announced early Wednesday that it has pulled out of talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives on forming the next coalition government.

“The Greens don’t want to negotiate on a coalition” with Merkel, party vice president Claudia Roth told a press conference after hours of discussions in Berlin.

Merkel must now attempt to form a coalition with the Social Democrats with whom talks are due to resume on Thursday.

Hermann Groehe, secretary-general of Merkel’s CDU party, confirmed that “there won’t be negotiations on a coalition government,” with the ecological Green party.

Despite a convincing win at the polls on Sept. 22, the CDU and their Bavarian sister party the CSU need to form an alliance with another party in order to ensure a majority in parliament.

A recent poll showed two-thirds of Germans would favor a left-right “grand coalition” between the two big parties, Merkel’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats.

The two main parties have already held two rounds of talks with a third penciled in for Thursday before the talks with the Greens broke down.