Chancellor Angela Merkel may keep Germany on a tight rein with her large majority in the Bundestag, but her grand coalition of the main center-right and center-left parties gives a louder voice to the smaller groups in opposition in the Parliament. This is particularly true of the Left Party, which edged out the Greens as the leading opposition party and is using that stage to oppose Merkel’s policies in Europe, and more recently in Ukraine. The Left Party, formed in 2007 through the merger of disaffected members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the rump party that emerged from the old East German Communist ... (full story)