German Foreign Minister Gabriel Refuses to Serve in New Government

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Thursday that he will not be a minister in the country’s new government.

"I won't be part of the new government," Gabriel said on Twitter, adding that the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary group head Andrea Nahles and SPD interim leader Olaf Scholz told him about this fact.

 

However, Gabriel noted that he would remain a member of the Bundestag.

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Following Gabriel's announcement, Spiegel Online reported that Social Democrat Heiko Maas, Justice Minister in the last government, would take the office of the German Foreign Minister under conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel in her new coalition with the SPD.

Germany's two largest parties, the union of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria and the SPD, each saw the number of their seats in Bundestag go down at the latest parliamentary election in September, while the AfD, a Bundestag first-timer, became the third largest force in the German parliament with 94 seats out of 709.

On Sunday, SPD agreed to form a coalition with Merkel's bloc of CDU/CSU, with 66 percent of SPD's members voted in favor of the grand coalition.