Chancellor Angela Merkel mulling fourth term in office

According to a report yesterday in the authoritative Der Spiegel news magazine, Merkel, 61, who has outlasted most of her rivals at home and overseas since assuming office in 2005, has already started planning her re-election campaign.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel gives a press conference after an EU summit focused on the common security, Defence policy and Economic and Monetary union, in Brussels on 20 December, 2013. If confirmed, the news will cheer her conservative party, which depends on her popularity to hold the chancellery after suffering a string of state election defeats.

Germany is now ruled by a grand coalition, or Große Koalition often stylized as GroKo, comprising the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Not ever since Konrad Adenauer’s one in three time period as chancellor resulted in 1961 has the CDU/CSU decided through use of an absolute greater number.

Several weeks ago the chancellor also spoke about the election campaign with the president of the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria. The change came as support for the far-left Left party fell by one percentage point.

Merkel’s handling of the Greece crisis, in which she worked tirelessly to negotiate the blueprint of a deal with Athens, secured her support.

Merkel became the first female chancellor and the first from former East Germany in 2005. In her second term, she shared power with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).

A fourth term will put her on a par with Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor who with his 16-year-long tenure (1982-1998) was the longest-serving in the country’s history after Otto von Bismarck. Neither were as popular among voters as Merkel.