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To dampen talk of another grand coalition next year, Dr Merkel attacked the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) as still “plagued with doubt” over decade-old reforms that put the German economy back on track.
In brief European remarks, Dr Merkel demanded a European banking regulator “worth the name” and support for a financial transaction tax even without full eurozone support. The eurozone was not out of the woods yet, she added, urging renewed reform efforts. “I don’t want that the euro scrapes through but that it emerges from the crisis stronger than it went in”, she said.
Rather than explain the last year of crisis summits and rescue measures to delegates, she demanded their future support for her "Alternativlos" [without any real alternative] measures, saying “Germany can only do well when Europe’s doing well”.
Merkel defended her coalition with the liberal FDP to party delegates. “There is no better coalition to lead our country than this one: the Christian-liberal coalition”, she said. On that point, however, there was no applause from the delegates. Many fear that the FDP will be too weak as a coalition partner in 2013, forcing Ms Merkel to seek a grand coalition with the SPD, or an unprecedented alliance with the Greens.