BERLIN (Reuters) – Europe’s new fiscal pact must emphasize growth as well as austerity, Germany’s main opposition party said on Thursday, echoing French calls for a shift in strategy before a meeting at which Chancellor Angela Merkel will ask it to back the plan.

The Social Democrats (SPD) have already threatened to embarrass Merkel by delaying a vote on the deal, designed to cement budget discipline within the crisis-hit euro zone. Germany’s leader wants to push legislation through parliament on the fiscal pact and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) bailout fund before the summer recess.

But invigorated by the election of Socialist President Francois Hollande in France, the German centre left is pushing for initiatives to boost employment and growth before it will commit to the pact.

“Mrs Merkel must significantly change her financial and economic policies for Europe if she wants to get the fiscal compact ratified,” said SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel.

He also said Merkel had to give up her blanket rejection of joint euro zone debt issuance, or euro bonds.

Gabriel signaled, however, that his party, which has until now backed Merkel on euro zone policies, would not torpedo the pact, and risk being blamed for plunging the euro zone deeper into crisis.

“Of course we will have nothing against the fiscal pact if a growth pact accompanies it,” he said.

BERLIN, May 23 (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed with Germany’s state premiers on Wednesday to step up efforts to expand the power grid and resolve a dispute over solar incentives as she tries to rescue plans for a switch away from nuclear to renewable energy.

Merkel said her vision for an energy shift in Europe’s biggest economy would require a lot of work and coordination but all parties at the three-hour talks in Berlin had vowed to work together despite clashing interests.

“The energy switch is a Herculean task which we are all committed to,” Merkel said after the meeting with Germany’s 16 regional leaders, adding that participants agreed energy supply must be secure, environmentally sustainable and affordable.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us but we agreed to work together,” Merkel told reporters.

Since Merkel’s abrupt policy reversal last year to shut more than half a dozen nuclear plants and speed up the nuclear phase-out after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, her government has failed to set out a clear plan to manage the shift.

Industry has warned of power shortages and companies are experiencing problems with plans for offshore wind power due partly to the insufficient grid network.

Merkel suffered another setback earlier this month when proposed cuts in subsidies for the solar industry were suspended by the Bundesrat upper house, where the federal states are represented, meaning weeks more of tortuous negotiations.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s new environment minister described a planned post-nuclear switch to renewable energy in Europe’s biggest economy as a “Herculean task” as 16 state premiers gathered to discuss the complex problem with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday.

Peter Altmaier, who took over as environment minister on Tuesday, vowed to break the deadlock between politicians, utilities, regulators and lobby groups whose clashing interests have undermined attempts to thrash out a strategy.

Since Merkel’s abrupt policy reversal last year to shut more than half a dozen nuclear plants and speed up the nuclear phase-out after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, her government has failed to set out a clear plan to manage the shift.

Industry has warned of power shortages and companies are experiencing problems with plans for offshore wind power due partly to the insufficient grid network.

Merkel suffered another setback earlier this month when proposed cuts in subsidies for the solar industry were suspended by the Bundesrat upper house, where the federal states are represented, meaning weeks more of tortuous negotiations.

“It is a Herculean task, but it is achievable,” Environment Minister Peter Altmaier told German radio, adding that his priority was to bring together all parties, ease tensions, build confidence and break the deadlock.

A close aide to Merkel and her former chief whip, Altmaier is a political big hitter who can tough out difficult negotiations and achieve results. Merkel fired his predecessor, Norbert Roettgen, after he took the blame for a humiliating regional election defeat for her Christian Democrats (CDU).

BERLIN, May 15 (Reuters) – Germany’s centre-left opposition told Angela Merkel it would only support her fiscal pact if it was accompanied by measures to boost growth and jobs, siding with France’s new Socialist President Francois Hollande hours ahead of his visit to Berlin.

Markets and policymakers are watching the dialogue between Germany’s conservative chancellor and the new French leader for signs that they can overcome their differences on Merkel’s drive for austerity.

Merkel has put more focus on the need for growth measures in the euro zone since Hollande’s election, but insists no measures can be taken that raise new sovereign debt in Europe. She is calling for structural reform in struggling euro states, such as labour market deregulation, to make them more competitive.

“That is not our definition of growth nor that of the Socialists in France,” said the Social Democrat (SPD) chairman Sigmar Gabriel.

Merkel has so far been able to count on the SPD and their Green allies for support in parliament on euro zone emergency measures such as the Greek bailouts, when some eurosceptic elements of her own centre-right coalition rebelled.

But with German federal elections next year and Merkel seen seeking a third term, the SPD has been emboldened by Hollande’s victory on an anti-austerity platform. The party got a huge boost from an election victory in North Rhine-Westphalia state on Sunday, when Merkel’s party was routed.

Merkel needs opposition help to get the fiscal pact through parliament because laws affecting Germany’s sovereignty and the constitution require a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag (upper house) and the Bundesrat (upper house). [ID:nL5E8E307Y}

BERLIN, May 14 (Reuters) – Her rivals call her Germany’s “debt queen”, but Hannelore Kraft’s victory in a state election at the weekend has driven speculation she could challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel as the mother of a nation famed for its frugality.

Kraft’s ready smile and common touch helped her turn around the fortunes of her Social Democrats (SPD) in the May 13 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and she was re-elected premier of Germany’s most populous state.

An economist and business consultant whose father was a tram-worker, Kraft has nowhere near the political experience of Merkel, who has been in power since 2005, even though, at 50, she is only seven years her junior.

But she has earned a reputation for political pragmatism, just like the conservative chancellor who will fight for a third term in 16 months’ time, and has an earthy charm Merkel lacks.

Kraft gave her victory speech in a disco, not somewhere Merkel would choose, breaking into song and thanking her mother for doing the ironing during the campaign. “To be honest, I am totally kaputt,” she told supporters.

On the campaign trail, she mingled with shoppers and chatted about day-to-day concerns, drawing on her own family’s experience such as the time when her husband was unemployed.

One tongue-in-cheek campaign poster “Currywurst ist SPD”, roughly translated as “Curry sausage – that’s the SPD” in reference to the working class delicacy, rams home Kraft’s election message – that she is close to ordinary people.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A potential rival to conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel could spring to national prominence later this month if she clinches victory for the Social Democrats (SPD) in a major regional election.

Polls indicate Hannelore Kraft, 50, a tram-worker’s daughter with a ready smile and common touch, will win the closely-watched May 13 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and be re-elected premier of Germany’s most populous state.

Such a result would give the SPD, who are trailing the conservatives by up to 10 points nationally, a morale boost and cement Kraft’s reputation in some eyes as a potential future chancellor.

“In the long term she is a leading light in the SPD, even if she wants to avoid such talk in the state campaign,” said Ulrich von Alemann, politics professor at Duesseldorf University.

For the last two years, the diminutive blonde with a self-confessed penchant for puzzles and quiz games, has ruled the state in a minority government with the Greens.

Most commentators dismiss media speculation that the relatively inexperienced Kraft could challenge Merkel in next year’s federal vote, although the SPD, Germany’s main opposition party, is widely seen as lacking an obvious candidate.

“If she delivers a convincing victory, the media will immediately say Kraft is the only one who has proven she can win elections,” said a political consultant close to the SPD.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A leading conservative politician said on Thursday that Islam did not belong in Germany, fuelling tension at a conference on integrating Muslims that also debated a controversial Salafist campaign to hand out copies of the Koran across the country.

“Islam is not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany,” Volker Kauder, head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in parliament, told the Passauer Neue Presse.

“But Muslims do belong in Germany. As state citizens, of course, they enjoy their full rights,” he added.

His remarks added to a highly charged nationwide debate about a campaign by an ultra-conservative Salafist Muslim group to hand out millions of free German translations of the Koran to non-Muslims.

The conference was one of a series hosted by the government to improve the integration of the four million Muslims living in Germany, about half of whom have German citizenship.

Many came from Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s and their hard work contributed to Germany’s post-war economic miracle. Germany has a population of about 81 million.

While some people of Turkish origin have risen to prominent political and public positions, many others live in their own communities and studies show many youngsters struggle to learn German properly, limiting their chances of finding work.

BERLIN (Reuters) – One March day in the last weeks of World War Two, more than 70 German children squeezed into a plane designed for 14 hoping to be flown to safety from the advancing Soviet tanks in north-eastern Nazi Germany.

Minutes after takeoff the plane dived into an icy lake, killing everyone on board. Nearly 70 years later, former war foes Germany and Poland are joining forces to try to raise the wreck from Resko Przymorskie in western Poland.

“The idea that whenever I went to the lake, I was walking by an open grave with so many children made me uneasy. To me, what we are doing is a natural thing,” Zdzislaw Matusewicz, mayor of the Polish town of Trzebiatow, told Reuters.

“Children are innocent in war — that applies to German as well as Polish children.”

The Polish mayor is working with Germany’s War Graves Commission to retrieve the remains of the mostly unidentified children and four crew from what is known in German as Kamper See and bury them in a nearby war cemetery.

Barely any of the childrens’ identities are known but since the project began, some people have come forward, hoping to obtain details about family members who went missing without trace in the chaotic last months of the war.

The water in the lake, close to the Baltic Sea, may have dissolved the bodies but some experts say that mud may have protected the plane and some DNA evidence could be intact.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition has inched ahead of the main opposition parties for the first time in two years, a poll showed on Sunday – thanks to a surge in support for the maverick Pirate Party at the expense of the Social Democrats.

An Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag newspaper put Merkel’s conservatives on 36 percent and their pro-business coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP), unchanged at 4 percent.

That puts the alliance short of a majority but just above the combined support for the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), who slipped one point to 26 percent, and their preferred partners, the Greens, unchanged at 13 percent.

If the poll heralds a trend, it could improve Merkel’s chances of returning to power with the FDP to continue running Europe’s biggest economy after federal elections in September 2013.

“The reason was the strong performance of the Pirate Party,” said Emnid in its analysis.

The Pirates, who campaign for Internet freedom, were up one point at 10 percent, their highest level since October in the Emnid poll, having drawn support away from the SPD.

The party, whose popularity has surged since it won seats in two recent regional assemblies, has a bearing on national politics as it alters the coalition arithmetic.