BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has steered her power-sharing government through a rocky 100 first days in office with a high-profile resignation and the Crimea crisis but remains at the height of her powers.

After the eurozone turmoil dominated her first two terms, Merkel now faces the worst political stand-off since the end of the Cold War, while at home her left-right government pushes ahead with social reforms opposed by business leaders.

However Merkel retains the confidence of Germans as her conservatives and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) chalk up today 100 days of the “grand coalition”, trumpeting progress on a minimum wage, pension reform and a rent increase cap.

Polls show the conservative bloc retains a strong lead over the SPD, hovering closely around the 41.5 versus 26 per cent they garnered at the ballot box in September. Unlike several of her European peers, Merkel retains her personal popularity.

“Merkel is the determining personality in German politics and has great respect even among the SPD’s voters,” said political analyst Ulrich von Alemann.

Analysts say her new four-year term has got off to a solid, if unambitious, start, which saw the government get past an early political bump in the road that sowed bad feeling within the cabinet. Sparked by a child porn probe, a scandal erupted in the SPD but claimed a conservative minister’s head over the suspected leaking of confidential information.

SPD Labour Minister Andrea Nahles has moved quickly on two controversial pension reforms — retirement at 63 for those who have paid into the system for 45 years and pension improvements for older mothers — and on an SPD deal-breaker, plans for a national minimum wage that applies to all, except under 18-year-olds and trainees.

“The two big parties have advocated for their clientele,” Alemann said, adding the coalition’s first 100 days had made a “relatively solid” start.

Fellow Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, who is vice-chancellor and energy and economy minister, earned praise for not losing time in presenting a much-awaited blueprint for the next phase of Germany’s vaunted green energy transition.

And rising star in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Ursula von der Leyen has sought to put her stamp on the defence portfolio, paying a pre-Christmas visit to troops in Afghanistan and calling for a more family-friendly army.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who helped Germany weather the financial crisis relatively unscathed, has announced the government’s budget for next year will entail no new debt for the first time since 1969.

Merkel, 59, returned from weeks of having to stay off her feet after a Christmas ski fall to face the build-up to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and has forged a unified approach to the crisis with her SPD foreign minister.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier was Germany’s top diplomat in the previous 2005-2009 “grand coalition”. “Steinmeier is certainly an asset for foreign policy,” said Andrea Roemmele, a professor at Berlin’s Hertie School of Governance.

But not all observers are upbeat over achievements so far. “Despite its crushing majority of 504 to 127 seats in the Bundestag [parliament], we’re waiting, in vain, for a big pitch by the government in the first 100 days,” online news site Die Zeit said.

News weekly Spiegel accused the government of policy contradictions that did not boil down to mere party differences. It also said that nobody wanted a repeat of the early chaos of previous coalitions but there was currently “barely friction because the parts are not at all first assembled into a whole. Because, in truth, everyone is doing his or her own thing.”

Political scientist Gero Neugebauer of Berlin’s Free University said he saw “no concrete results” but that 100 days was tight for passing legislation. However he said it was long enough to demonstrate whether the “coalition chemistry” was right and said the close cooperation between Merkel and Gabriel had shown “the chemistry is working there”.—AFP