State Election Struggle Continues

After a tight election outcome in Schleswig-Holstein, the northern state's Social Democratic Party (SPD) is going to decide Monday with which party they will negotiate the formation of a governing coalition, the German newsweekly Der Spiegel's online edition reported. The SPD's main rival, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), abandoned its strategy of winning the small Danish minority party SSW for their purposes of forming a coalition with the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The SSW, which won two seats in the election and thus became a key player, announced plans to enter talks with the SPD about supporting a minority coalition with the Green party. The CDU has now decided to urge for the formation of a grand coalition with SPD and Greens, an option the conservatives had previously rejected. Signaling a willingness to settle the debate over school reform, they announced that they are ready to accept the SPD's plan for introducing a uniform high school next to the existing system of three different levels of high school. Meanwhile, the SPD officially prefers a coalition with the Greens and SSW.