Germany: Parties Try and Fail to Push Hard Talks Forward With a Soft Deadline

Germany has been diligently attempting to move forward with coalition negotiations, but the participating parties are struggling to make headway. On Nov. 16, they missed a self-imposed deadline, and the four parties -- Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the environmentalist Greens -- resumed negotiations on Nov. 17. ...