LONDON OFFICE The Chandlery, Office 609 50 Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7QY Tel:+44-(0)20-7721 8745 Fax:+44-(0)20-7721 8746 e-mail: feslondon@dial.pipex.com website: www.fes.de/london FOCUS GERMANY The Elections in Germany and the SPD Ernst Hillebrand Germany will be governed in the years to come by a grand coalition. The SPD can be content with this outcome, since the party achieved a far better result than many ob­servers had expected. Among younger people in particular, the SPD was far more popular than the conservative CDU/CSU. The following paper outlines the SPD's elec­tion result, the central elements of its election campaign and the probable key areas on which the grand coalition will concentrate. Germany's next government will most probably be a grand coalition comprising the three po­litical parties, SPD, CDU and CSU. Any other configuration now seems highly unlikely: the rise of the Linkspartei(party of the left) robbed the traditional coalition blocks of the post-war era in Germany of their ability to achieve majorities in the Bundestag. The election result defied all the predictions of the opinion poll institutes and professional po­litical commentators: Party Percentage Seats SPD 34.3(-4.3) 222 CDU and CSU 35.2(-3,3) 226 FDP(liberals) 9.8(+2.4) 61 Linkspartei(party of the left) 8.7(+4.7) 54 Die Grünen(Greens) 8.1(-0.4) 51 The SPD is, from a purely legal point of view, by far the largest political party in the country. The CDU and CSU are independent parties with their own legal status, their own chairmen, executive boards, financial structures and political foundations. This is the basis for the SPD's claim to provide the new chancellor in a grand coalition from its own ranks, being the largest single party. There is uncertainty however, as to whether this approach will succeed, since the CDU and CSU traditionally form a single group in the German lower chamber of government, the Bundestag.