BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz, who is in talks to form a three-way ruling coalition with the pro-spending Greens and the fiscally more prudent Free Democrats, said on Monday that negotiations were going very well.
Speaking at a dinner event organised by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, Scholz declined comment on any partial results of the talks which have been held secretively in Berlin over the past couple of weeks, with hardly any details emerging.
“Everything is going very, very well, very constructively,” Scholz said.
Scholz said the negotiations were on track and that he was confident an agreement could be reached soon to form Germany’s next ruling coalition.
Scholz and his centre-left Social Democrats hope to wrap up coalition talks with the Greens and the FDP by the end of the month so that he can be elected by parliament as successor of Chancellor Angela Merkel in the week from Dec. 6 – right in time before the next European Union leaders summit on Dec. 16-17.
The Greens and the FDP are at odds over how to finance an agreed expansion of renewable energies and how to pull forward an exit date for coal-fired power plants to 2030.
(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; editing by Grant McCool)
