HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – Angela Merkel launched her re-election campaign on Tuesday at the height of her popularity, with a speech to a congress of her conservative Christian Democrats that showed off the party unity she will need to prevail in next year’s vote.

Delegates stood and applauded for eight minutes after Merkel told them they were the only party that could steer Germany through the “stormy waters” of economic crisis and geo-political change.

EISENHUETTENSTADT, Germany (Reuters) – This fading industrial city, like many in Angela Merkel’s former East German home, is stony ground for the chancellor’s message of European integration and fertile soil for opponents trying to stop her winning a third term next September.

More than two decades after unification, income and jobs in the five eastern states, home to 15 percent of the population, still lag behind the west and trillions of euros in transfers have not stemmed an exodus that has left some areas looking like ghost towns.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German lawmakers approved the latest bailout for Greece on Friday by a large majority despite growing unease about the cost to taxpayers less than a year before federal elections.

The outcome of the vote in the lower house was never in doubt but it was a test of Angela Merkel’s authority over her centre-right coalition. She did not manage to draw an absolute majority from her own ranks after 23 of her lawmakers rebelled.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged German lawmakers on Friday to approve the latest bailout for Greece despite their growing unease about the cost to taxpayers less than a year before federal elections.

Schaeuble praised the new Greek government’s commitment to tough austerity measures but said speculation – including among German politicians – that Athens’s international creditors will eventually have to write off debt could derail the reform drive.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German lawmakers are likely to approve the release of Greek aid immediately despite suspicions that talks of a debt write-down have just been delayed until after Germany’s 2013 elections.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition and the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) said on Tuesday that the Greek deal agreed overnight would be put to the vote in the Bundestag lower house on Thursday or Friday.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s environment minister has come out in support of a European Commission proposal to prevent the collapse of its instrument for cutting carbon emissions by withdrawing some emission permits from the market.

Peter Altmaier, an influential figure in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Reuters he hoped the ruling centre-right coalition could agree to support it in time for a European Union summit in December.

BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) – IKEA apologised on Friday for
using the forced labour of political prisoners in communist East
Germany to make some of its furniture during the 1980s.

Victims of the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) Stasi
secret police watched as a senior executive of the Swedish giant
acknowledged for the first time that it had failed to act when
rumours of prison labour emerged.

BERLIN, Nov 15 (Reuters) – France’s German-speaking prime
minister offered a worried Berlin reassurances on Thursday that
his government would reduce the deficit and prevent France from
becoming the next victim of the euro crisis by applying a new
economic model.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, making his first visit to Berlin since
Francois Hollande became president, told Chancellor Angela
Merkel that France would find its own way to reduce spending and
boost economic growth and jobs, rather than copying Germany.

BERLIN (Reuters) – France’s German-speaking prime minister tried to reassure his worried hosts in Berlin on Thursday that his Socialist government was serious about reducing the deficit and preventing France from becoming the next victim of the euro crisis.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, making his first visit to Berlin since Francois Hollande became French president, started by meeting German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who is reported to have fundamental doubts about France’s reform zeal.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure to resolve a dispute on taxes and welfare between her centre-right coalition partners this weekend in order to present a united front before elections in 2013.

The challenge for Merkel’s conservatives and their junior Free Democrat (FDP) partners is to ensure that any compromise on rival welfare proposals does not threaten the government’s ambitious goal of balancing the budget by 2014.