German Social Democrats in crisis

BERLIN, June 11 (UPI) -- Germany's Social Democratic Party is in crisis after disastrous European election results just three months before the country's national elections.

German voters handed the SPD an embarrassing 20.8 percent in Sunday's European Parliament elections, the worst nationwide results in the party's post-World War II history.

The result has tarnished Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier's hopes to win the race for chancellor. The SPD foreign minister has vowed to beat the incumbent, Angela Merkel, in the Sept. 27 federal elections. But opinion polls clearly favor Merkel -- far from being a model charmer herself -- over the even duller Steinmeier.

In 2005 the SPD was hopelessly behind as well; but its charming campaign warhorse, Gerhard Schroeder, managed to heave the party back into a grand coalition government with Merkel's conservatives.

"If the SPD wants to win the upcoming federal elections they need a turnaround Schroeder-style," Jan Techau, a political expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International. "But many inside the SPD lack the confidence in Steinmeier to achieve that."

The SPD has so far refused to question its front-runner. Techau says that's in part due to a lack of alternatives.

"The SPD has no clue what to do right now."

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Stefan Nicola, UPI Europe Correspondent

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(snicola@upi.com)