“One thing is certain: Merkel will remain German Chancellor”

As Chancellor Angela Merkel enters Bundestag, she stands with her red zamback. Twelve years ago, almost this day, she stayed here for the first time as Germany's first German Chancellor. She is missing a majority in parliament.

This may sound like a crisis like Merkel's power is shrinking. But it does not look like that, as she walks through Bundestag, shaking hands with parliamentarians. She sees Paul Ziemak, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union youth branch, and postpones it. Both sit in the back of an empty line and open a private conversation, reports “Deutsche Welle”, the Periscope broadcast.

Ziemak and his supporters have often criticised the Chancellor in the past, but now they seem to have changed their minds and regard him as the right choice: “Germania needs stability and if someone stays for stability, then it's Angela Merkel. ”

But that's not what they said shortly after the September 24th election. With the Christian Democratic Socialist Party (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), conservatives won only 33 per cent of the vote, their worst since 1949.

For Merkel, failure does not mean loss

“Merkel sees things differently,” said Andreas Rinke, a journalist with the news agency “Reuters” covering Berlin. He has been following Merkel's actions for years, and in 2016 he has published a book on the Chancellor: “Kancelar from A-Z”.

From Merkel's point of view, the election results were bad “, but not catastrophic”, Rinke said. In his book, the word “waste” has its share ʹ but it's just a long page and ends up on the line: “For Merkel, a failure is never the equivalent with a final loss of”.

The collapse of coalition talks last weekend was “naturally, a failure”, Rinke said. For more than four weeks, the Chancellor tried to form an alliance with the Green Party and the Free Pro-business Democrats (FDP), but failed.

“Politics sometimes leads to paradoxical situations”, Rinke said.

These exploratory conversations marked the first time Merkel had joined parties with such opposing views to consider the possibility of forming a trilateral coalition. But at the start of the talks, a controversial issue, closely related to Merkel, began to present problems: refugee policy in Germany.

German society is still divided over Merkel's decision to open borders for refugees in 2015. While Green Party voters praised the Chancellor's decision, there was much criticism from its ranks.

Refugees' policy was also an important topic during the election campaign. Bravaria's CSU turned against Merkel and demanded a limit on the number of refugees allowed to enter the country. The Greens, however, wanted to go further and allow refugee families to join them in Germany. During the talks of other parties also named as “Gimajka” due to the color of their flags, Merkel had to convince different camps to accept a policy, and it achieved even though coalition talks were eventually destroyed.

Rinke believes Merkel has yet another reason to see the fall of talks as a victory. The Chancellor managed to convince the greens to agree with its refugee policy and they would be ready to join the conservative coalition in a coalition.

In Rinke Chancellor Merkel's dictionary, Merkel uses the words “the dreams of the tubes” and “yllusions” regarding a possible coalition with the Greens. Now, however, she is satisfied with the newly developed “flexible in the party's spectrum”, Rinke said.

There's never been a coalition between the CDU/ CSU and Greens at federal level.

But after Merkel's government removed several obstacles by introducing a phase of nuclear power isolation and approval of the same sex marriage earlier this year, other compromise lines were discovered in coalition talks. CDU Co-operation / CSU-Gelbrit is no longer realistic.

The conservative alliance now can hold all open options and we are united,” said Ziemak.

One thing is certain: Merkel will remain Germany's Chancellor. In interviews this week, she has said she is prepared to serve for the next four years even if it comes to new elections.

“Technically, I'm not afraid of anything,” said Merkel./Periscopi/