Germany’s labour minister and co-leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Bärbel Bas, has quit both posts, citing the death of her stepdaughter and subsequent political attacks against her, in a stinging blow to the fragile coalition government.
“After my stepdaughter’s death, I realised that I need time to come to terms with my grief,” Bas said in a statement posted on Facebook, without giving further details.
Explaining her departure from frontline politics, Bas explicitly blamed public broadsides against her as she grappled with the family tragedy, “unfortunately also from among the ranks of the coalition partner,” Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
She said the attacks “continued to intensify during this difficult time for me personally”.
Some CDU lawmakers had criticised Bas’s absences during a crunch phase of an economic reform drive seen as crucial to the teetering government’s survival, although it was widely known she had experienced a death in her immediate family.
Bas’s co-leader at the SPD, Lars Klingbeil, who is also Merz’s vice-chancellor and finance minister, expressed regret at her departure and slammed the sniping against her while she was mourning as “indecent”.
Klingbeil cancelled a planned trip to India to deal with the fallout from Bas’s resignation, and criticised a degradation of the national political discourse.
“We are competitors, and we need a culture of debate. But we also need a culture of mutual respect,” Klingbeil told reporters.
Merz, who has been fighting for his political survival after three disastrous state elections for his CDU last month, thanked Bas for “cooperation based on trust” in government and offered his condolences.
“As a father and grandfather, I can only imagine how deeply felt this loss is for you. I wish you and your family strength,” he wrote on X.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, also gave Bas her sympathies but said her angry words towards the CDU demonstrated that Merz’s coalition government “is at its end”. She added: “We need a fresh start for Germany.”
The AfD, Germany’s biggest opposition party, is leading national opinion polls at about ۳۰% after a strong showing in September’s regional elections, which also saw gains for the hard left.
Bas, who will remain an MP for Duisburg in the former Ruhr mining region, is a former president of the Bundestag lower house of parliament and one of the most experienced members of the Social Democrats.
Her ministry oversees large parts of Germany’s costly social welfare system, which Merz has targeted for cuts.
While a representative of the party’s left wing, Bas was widely seen as a constructive team player able to bridge the kind of implacable policy disputes that have plagued Merz’s government since its inception in May ۲۰۲۵.
Her absence will now be keenly felt.
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The coalition is deeply divided over plans to revive the sputtering economy, the EU’s largest, with Merz spearheading a pro-business savings drive and the SPD insisting on maintaining protections of workers’ rights and benefits.
The pension system is in particularly urgent need of reform as German society rapidly ages but plans to gradually lift the retirement age have met with angry resistance.
Approval ratings for Merz and his government have plunged over the course of the year, with voters fearing further deindustrialisation in the face of Chinese competition and steep rises in the cost of living.
Merz, a former corporate lawyer, is often perceived as haughty and out of touch, compounding his administration’s woes and giving rise to calls to replace him at the helm.
He has vowed to stay in office and fight for his policy agenda, saying it was the only way to beat back the “poison of authoritarianism” with extremists on the march.
The next general election is due in ۲۰۲۹ but five more state polls loom next year.
One of Merz’s cabinet ministers, Karin Prien, sounded the alarm last week, publicly calling for a change of course in the CDU away from Merz’s harsher stances and rhetoric.
“We bit our tongues for two or three years but that’s no longer an option,” the family affairs minister told Reuters ahead of a weekend party leadership meeting, referring to its centrist wing. “The ‘pure CDU’ approach (pursued by Merz) has failed.”
