Germany is having its ‘Brexit and Trump moment’ as Angela Merkel’s coalition talks collapse

Germany is having its ‘Brexit moment’, political observers have warned, as coalition talks to form a new government collapsed.

Conservative chancellor Angela Merkel’s talks on forming a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and traditionally left-leaning Greens fell apart on Sunday night.

On Monday, the centre-left Social Democrats, Mrs Merkel’s partners in the outgoing government, said they will not budge from their refusal to enter a new administration led by Mrs Merkel.

If that stands, a minority government or new elections are the only options.

Christiane Hoffmann, from German magazine Der Spiegel, said: ‘The crisis of parliamentary democracy, which has led to profound changes in the party system in many Western countries, has now reached Germany as well.

‘It’s the German Brexit moment, the Trump moment.

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‘Just like during the nights of the Brexit vote and the Trump election, everyone believed right up to the end that it would not be so bad that state-political reason would prevail over party-political interests.’

Germany is now in a political crisis, and its president urged the party leaders to reconsider their positions and get back to the negotiating table to form a new government.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he will meet the various parties this week and urged them to rethink.

Mr Steinmeier said: ‘There would be incomprehension and great concern inside and outside our country, and particularly in our European neighbourhood, if the political forces in the biggest and economically strongest country in Europe of all places did not fulfil their responsibility.’

An election in September produced an awkward result that left Mrs Merkel’s two-party conservative bloc seeking a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and the traditionally left-leaning Greens.

The combination of ideologically-disparate parties had not been tried before in a national government, and came to nothing when the Free Democrats walked out of talks on Sunday night.

Mrs Merkel said her conservatives had left ‘nothing untried to find a solution’.

She said that she ‘will do everything to ensure that this country is well-led through these difficult weeks’.

But the leader of Germany’s main centre-left party says it will stick by its refusal to join a new government under Mrs Merkel.

The Social Democrats have been the junior partners in a ‘grand coalition’ government of Germany’s biggest parties since 2013.

But their leaders have said since the party slumped in September to its worst election result since the Second World War that it would go into opposition.

Party chairman Martin Schulz said on Monday that the Social Democrats are ‘not available’ for a repeat of the outgoing coalition.

Mr Schulz said his party is not afraid of a new election.