Could Germany make a new 'pizza connection' if Merkel signs up the Greens?

More than 20 years ago unlikely conservative-conservationist meetings were held in a Bonn Italian restaurant, now a ruling coalition seems possibleOn the evening of 1 June 1995 an unlikely group gathered for an informal dinner at an Italian restaurant in Bonn, then the seat of the German parliament. On one side of the table at Sassella were delegates of the Green party, on the other side the establishment they had gone into politics to oppose: suited and gelled young members of the Christian Democratic Union, the party led by the staunchly pro-nuclear Helmut Kohl.In German political circles, the informal gathering at Sassella became synonymous with supping with the devil: one Green participant likened the brick-walled basement where the party's anti-nuclear activists, LGBT campaigners and former East German pacifists debated the common ground between conservatism and conservationism to an "enchanted cellar". Continue reading...