If Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) forge a new center-right government with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), it would spell the end of the four-year alliance with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Deutsche Welle looks back at the last four years and the record of the grand coalition.

Two big parties means little opposition

Elected in the autumn of 2005 to replace the SPD-Green coalition of then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Merkel and her deputy, Steinmeier, set about turning former political foes into friends and tackling a long list of unfinished business.

At the time, Merkel said the new CDU-SPD coalition offered "an opportunity to overcome the economic crisis and advance reforms."

Since then, the grand coalition, facing only a small and ideologically divided opposition in parliament, has pushed through a wide range of legislation.

In the area of finance and economic reform, the grand coalition introduced the biggest tax hike in post-war German history, increasing the sales tax from 16 to 19 percent.

The government raised the pension age to 67 from 65 to offset the costs of an aging population. It also extended the minimum wage to new sectors of the economy, but did not introduce a blanket minimum for everybody.

Rising to the challenges of the economic crisis

It successfully reined in budget deficits, only to see the savings evaporate in the face of the global economic crisis and is now sitting atop the biggest deficit Germany has ever had.

To combat the economic meltdown the government passed two stimulus packages worth 81 billion euros ($120 billion). It also set up a mammoth 500-billion-euro bank rescue plan to boost liquidity, and a 100-billion-euro "bad bank" plan to relieve banks of their toxic assets.

It introduced a much-copied "cash-for-clunkers" program to help the auto industry out of a serious sales slump.

The coalition also jumped to the rescue of German carmaker, Opel, a subsidiary of US automaker, General Motors. The deal, according to the German weekly magazine, Der Spiegel, was so important to Merkel that she told US President Barack Obama that it was "a test case for transatlantic relations."

Mixed reviews on foreign policy

Those relations would indeed be tested in the foreign policy sector. The coalition first mended ties with the United States, which were sorely strained over the Iraq war.

Merkel then took a critical approach toward Russia and China on human rights issues and caused outrage in Beijing in 2007 by meeting the Dalai Lama.

However, the coalition has since been sharply criticized for its all-too chummy relationship with Moscow, especially in the energy sector. These ties prompted Finland's Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb to comment that Germany has "weakened the unity of the European Union."

Merkel and Steinmeier have also been taken to task for their contradictory relationship to NATO.

On the one hand, Germany is participating in naval monitoring missions off the coast of Lebanon and the Horn of Africa, but has been very reticent to get more involved in Afghanistan, where it has about 4,200 troops in a mostly non-combat capacity.

Coalition pushes climate agenda

Merkel did, however, earn considerable kudos for her six-month role as head of the EU presidency. She got EU and G-8 members to tackle climate change and laid the groundwork for the EU's Lisbon reform treaty.

Back on the home front, the grand coalition introduced steps for Germany to cut its CO2 emissions by more than a third by 2020 and boosted efforts to promote renewable energy sources. But, the CDU and SPD remain starkly divided over the issue of nuclear energy and whether or not to keep or extend a planned phase-out by 2030.

gb/dpa/AP/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Kristin Zeier