BERLIN — Germany’s governing parties sought Monday to put behind them long-running internal divisions on labour reforms and migration policy, but the results could deepen tensions in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition. Party leader Andrea Nahles declared that the Social Democrats “are leaving behind us” an unpopular system of limited and conditional long-term unemployment benefits introduced under Schroeder. There is little chance of making the proposals reality in the coalition that the Social Democrats reluctantly entered last year. “We want to govern, but we want to govern with ideas that are in tune with the times,” the Social Democrats’ general secretary, Lars Klingbeil, said on ZDF television. New party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer convened the meeting after succeeding Merkel in December, in an effort to prevent the issue becoming the kind of running sore that labour and benefits have been for the Social Democrats.

Source: National Post February 11, 2019 07:52 UTC