08 October, 2017
Support for Merkel's bloc declined in the September 24 election by nearly 9 percentage points, to 32.9 percent.
The so-called Jamaica coalition - known as such because the three parties' colors of black, yellow and green correspond with those of the Jamaican flag - is untried at the national level.
On Sunday, the leaders of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and Weber's Christian Social Union (CSU) - which are sister parties - will meet in Berlin for closed-door talks to lay the groundwork for coalition negotiations with the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens later in the fall.
She told the youth wing of her party in Dresden that members should concentrate on talks that lie ahead, first within the conservative bloc between the CDU and its CSU sister party from the state of Bavaria, and then with the FDP and Greens.
"It is apparent that the SPD is not in the position to govern at the federal level for the foreseeable future, therefore I advise all of us not to waste further time on it", she said.
"We are doing a lot, but it will still take a while", Merkel said, adding, however, that she would work for an agreement with the CSU. Merkel says a cap would breach the constitution which guarantees asylum to politically persecuted people.
Most of the migrants who arrived two years ago entered Germany through Bavaria.
The young conservatives' "Dresden declaration" called for an "honest and unflinching questioning of our polices of the past years" given the election results.
Deputy finance minister Jens Spahn, considered a possible successor to Merkel, drew sustained applause for a speech in which he blamed the government's migration policies for the election losses, and said conservative leaders had refused to acknowledge that fact or address the public's fears head on.
"It's normal that as individual parties we establish individual priorities", Weber said Thursday.
The FDP has said it could not agree to a euro zone budget that would help redress economic imbalances within the bloc.
