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Klose: 'We can also gain from new elections'

January 15, 2018

It's a tough sell: another Merkel-led coalition after the last one gave the SPD historically low election results. Annika Klose, Young Socialists chair in Berlin, spoke to DW about the party's options — including new elections.

https://p.dw.com/p/2qtT8

The chair of Berlin's Young Socialists Annika Klose has a message for Germany's Social Democratic (SPD) leader Martin Schulz: the party could gain more from fresh elections than from joining Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives in a new Grand Coalition.

If Schulz fails to win over enough delegates to support his policy blueprint for a governing coalition, Merkel would either have to lead a minority government or, more likely, Germany would find itself returning to the polls. 

Read more: Prospect of new 'grand coalition' threatens to split Germany's SPD

With all of Germany's political leaders seemingly spooked by the prospect of another vote, the SPD's youth wing has made secret that it is against striking another deal with the conservatives.

Klose stressed in an interview with DW that "if the party decides against joining Angela Merkel's coalition and instead pushes for real social democratic principles and values, then we can also gain from new elections."

The Young Socialists chair also warned that the SPD would be left "to feed off Merkel's crumbs" if it agreed to forge a new coalition.

"We had the worst turnout after coming out of a Grand Coalition," said Klose. "We went into that coalition with the same debate (as now): 'Can we really push our social democratic values in this coalition?' And after four years we suffered our worse election result. Our answer cannot be to do the same thing again."