Europe’s largest, most powerful country turns inwards and waits as, in all-night sessions, party bigwigs poker their way towards a coalition that can satisfy at least some of the voters’ demands.
At the end of it all a binding contract is signed. The virtual dead-heat that emerged from Sunday’s election, with the (SPD) just under 2 percentage points ahead of the rival Christian Democrats (CDU), suggests that finding a stable government will be a slog. A German government by Christmas, as promised by the SPD leader Olaf Scholz, seems overly optimistic.