covering those talks for us is our political correspondent rupert and he joins us now for more so rupert merkel perhaps sounding optimistic but she certainly has a lot of work ahead of her as these preliminary preliminary coalition talks get underway what are the main hurdles for her. well basically we have three parties here sitting at the negotiating table just behind me in this building the social democrat how the quarter there is first of all the e.c. is you the conservative party bloc of anglo american the c.d.u. c.s.u. and especially the c. is you the small of the two parties is more conservative and they have already pointed out that they want to be more strict on refugee policy that they want to have. less integration into europe on one to cut corporate taxes something especially the social democrats are absolutely opposed to so the social democrats on the other side they are very reluctant to go again into this grand coalition as it is called here in germany as they have been in a grand coalition for the past four years and it didn't serve them at all they also we have to remember made

these points and as we heard from rupert on it seems as if a compromise might actually have emerged there on the tax policy that it might have been been a win for angela merkel and her party in other words no varies in the taxes for that upper bracket tell us a little bit more about health care or the other outstanding issues yeah i mean germany we have two different ways of health insurance so you have these private ones and you have the the ones by the state and. as big deal the social democrats warmth so called google physician alone so one health insurance for everyone and this is obviously not swapped with the conservatives want because they're always saying that the health insurance also relies on having a competition for in order to two provides i think what's health care for all citizens i want to talk a little bit more about leadership here in germany because that is something which has really been discussed a lot in the past couple months you know what is germany's future with regard to leadership so much speculation about angela merkel and her future as chancellor. do you think her days are numbered and if so how many days does she have. i don't t

merkel being weakened? how weakened is she and does it also impact the italian elections, but also ecb policies with a lot of people moving out? rupertgerman situation has rained on the macron's parade. it underlines the tensions between french and german that were going to be difficult to reconcile. within her party, she is weakened because people are starting to look towards the post merkel area and there's concern they have been losing votes to the afd and the kind of edu -- for this have broaderesn't consequences beyond that, i think. the ecb debate is basically settled until halfway through the year. they kind of got over the big hump of last year and have gone to the each -- beach. the italian election is pretty generous. you've got this potentially ,oxic combination of the league could they cause an upset in some way? it seems less likely now particularly the immigration numbers across the mediterranean have come down. francine: we like to debate -- tom: we like to debate in bloomberg surveillance and we identify that this morning. mr. harrison suggests a more optimistic tone. at the telegraph going the other way, concerned ab