Following the setbacks for the SDP in the series of elections and the advances of the PDS voices have been raised increasingly strongly in the SPD that the party should be able to discuss cooperation with the PDS. Schroeder's office appears to have backed a formula announced by the incoming party president Muntefering, that this issue can be decided on a state to state (Länder) basis. The SPD head in the south west state of Baden Baden, which tends to be dominated by an alliance of the CDU and the Greens, has called for "unverkrampft" exchanges with the PDS. I think that means uninhibited or unconstrained.
Although the CDU is still trying to scare the SPD into avoiding all contact with the PDS it appears that that restraint has gone and the SPD has decided in its somewhat weakened condition that for tactical reasons alone it must be able to bargain with the PDS as well as the CDU.
Meanwhile I think I caught one suggestion that the SPD should have a strategic alliance with the shrinking FDP. Although the FDP is very much a party of economic liberalism, the formula was said to be based on an understanding between its concepts of human rights and the more social emphasis on human rights of the SPD.
Altogether German politics look a little more fluid.
If the PDS is really out of the ghetto it is not clear how much there may be a real option in the future for a more radical social democratic alliance. But at least the traditions of socialism of east Germany have indirectly been recognised as not entirely negative.This symbolic shift may be hard to define but it may signal some hope for greater social accountability in the process of European integration.
Chris Burford
London