For German businesses, the elections were bad enough. In September voters denied the business-friendly, small-government Free Democrats the 5% of the vote required to stay both in parliament and in the centre-right coalition government. The election result has led to a "grand coalition" between Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, its Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union, and the leftish Social Democrats (spd). Though the spd finished well behind the cdu-csu, their coalition agreement, signed at the end of November, looks to many like a wishlist for the left.
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