BERLIN (AP) Chancellor Angela Merkel is insisting that Germany's new government must keep a lid on spending as she prepares for the decisive phase of coalition talks with her traditional center-left rivals.
Merkel's conservative Union bloc and the Social Democrats hope to reach agreement this week on a "grand coalition" of Germany's biggest parties. That's more than two months after the conservatives won elections but fell short of a parliamentary majority.
Many details of the new government's agenda remain unresolved and Merkel's conservatives are adamant they won't accept tax increases to finance spending which the Social Democrats campaigned for before the elections.
Merkel has pushed austerity elsewhere in Europe during its debt crisis. She insisted at a union conference in Frankfurt on Monday that Germany "must stop running up debt."
