BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel promised on Monday renewal for her conservative party as she moved to quell a right-wing rebellion and seek blessing for a hard-fought coalition deal after five months of political impasse in Germany.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party she has led for nearly 18 years, held a delegates’ meeting in Berlin to vote on a government pact hammered out in early February with the Social Democrats (SPD).

Merkel, who was left without a majority in September elections, paid a high price to coax the reluctant SPD back into another loveless “grand coalition”, the alliance which has ruled Germany for eight of her 12 years in power.

The deal included the CDU ceding control to the Social Democrats of the powerful finance ministry, seen by conservatives as a guarantor of budgetary rigor in Germany and the eurozone.

Merkel, once the seemingly invincible leader of her party and the nation, has looked severely weakened in recent months given her protracted struggle to put together a viable coalition for her fourth and likely final term.

Opponents of her liberal refugee policy have grown more outspoken as the country’s major parties face pressure from the far-right AfD party which has railed against a mass influx of more than one million asylum seekers since 2015.

While the CDU was expected to approve the coalition deal, Merkel said it also needed to examine the implications of its worst post-war election score.

To this end, she vowed to “set the party on course towards... renewal”.

To tamp down the rumblings, Merkel moved on Sunday to co-opt one of her most outspoken CDU critics, Jens Spahn, by bringing him into her next cabinet as health minister.

Spahn, 37, a former deputy to hardliner Wolfgang Schaeuble at the finance ministry, has repeatedly slammed Merkel’s centrist policies, particularly on immigration.

He has also advocated a sharp conservative shift in a bid to woo back voters from the AfD, which garnered nearly 13 percent in the September election.

Announcing the new line-up, Merkel called Spahn “a representative of the younger generation” who would play a constructive role.

“People sometimes make critical comments — Jens Spahn is not the only one and that’s OK,” she said.

“Nevertheless we have the task to do something good for Germany and that’s what he wants to do, just like all the other cabinet members.”

Political analyst Timo Lochocki said the cabinet choice illustrated the difficult position Merkel finds herself in within her party.

“Clearly, she felt that she had to make concessions to the conservative wing to remain able to take action,” he said.

Merkel filled the remaining CDU ministries with loyalists, keeping Ursula von der Leyen at the defense ministry, putting close ally Peter Altmaier on the economic affairs brief and placing Julia Kloeckner in the agriculture job.

Two relatively obscure CDU politicians, Anja Karliczek and Helge Braun, are to take the education and chief-of-staff briefs respectively, said Merkel, noting that at 63 she will be the oldest member of the government.

The Cabinet picks “are future-oriented — they bring together experience with new faces in a good mix”, Merkel said, but admitted it had required some “painful” choices. — AFP