Germany's grand coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats has run into trouble. Chancellor Angela Merkel has been unable so far to secure an agreement on her government's biggest project to date, the reform of the inefficient health service. The Social Democrats, frustrated after months of enforced and fruitless harmony in the coalition, are starting to flirt with the smaller opposition liberal Free Democrats. And members of Merkel's conservatives are openly accusing SPD Health Minister Ulla Schmidt of trickery and incompetence.

There's a palpable lack of trust among the partners who almost a year ago pledged to put aside their differences and work for the good of Germany. Their failure to agree on a revamp of the health reform and their increasingly bitter sniping at each other has sparked speculation of a break-up.

But most media commentators think the coalition will continue to limp along for now because there are no real alternative alliances in the current party landscape. Despite the current rapprochement between the pro-market FDP and the SPD, with rumors of backroom meetings and of a possible alliance that would replace Merkel with SPD leader Kurt Beck as new chancellor, the two parties are so far apart in key policy areas that they wouldn't be any better at agreeing reforms than the current coalition.

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes that the grand coalition was only ever meant to last for one term and "therefore contained the seed of the next election campaign." Nevertheless, it continues, "there was the hope that the two partners may be interested in clearing away a few reform hurdles so that they wouldn't have to stumble over them again after the next election in a different political constellation." But that's no the way things have turned out. Instead, the paper points out, the grand coalition seems incapable of big deeds, preferring instead to get sidetracked by day-to-day bickering. "Its decline in opinion polls mirrors this development: expectations have sunk to a minimum, the level of dissatisfaction is rising." But the paper adds: "Everything suggests that that speculation about a break-up of the grand coalition and new government combinations is nothing more than tactical play. Because no alternative is in sight that would promise an improvement, the grand coalition is going to have to muddle through."

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung says none of the alternative coalition scenarios would work because the parties are just as or further apart on policy. "The conservatives and SPD have no alternative, and neither does the German people. The tortuous theater will continue, and at the end of it there'll be some sort of reform which takes account of as many interests as possible. It will not be a masterpiece, and definitely won't be the reform of the century." Even if individuals in another coalition may like each other more, they wouldn't do a better job, writes Süddeutsche.

Left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes: "The mood in the grand coalition is getting steadily worse and there's no improvement in sight." Little wonder, then, the paper writes, that thoughts are being played out for what political alternatives there are to the alliance of SPD and conservatives. The answer is: not many. "It's scarecely imaginable that the FDP, which wants radical privatisation in the health service and a decline in employee job protection, could have a better time cooperating with the SPD than the conservatives. Besides, the Greens would be required to form such an alternative alliance to the grand coalition. But they aren't even close to recovering their effectiveness in terms of policy and personnel after losing power last year and after their long-time frontman Joschka Fischer stepped down."

Business daily Handelsblatt seems even more pessimistic in its assessment. "Like fighting cockerels, the partners are hacking away at each other and enjoying the liberating aggression after months of infuriating discipline," the paper writes. Then, the paper condemns Germany to political purgatory. "What's being vented here doesn't have to destroy the coalition but removes all hope that the coalition will achieve a new beginning." Germany's presidency of the EU and G8 will dominate the government's work in the first half of next year, the paper points out, but after that the coalition will face a yawning emptiness. This is when Merkel may face a coup by regional party barons, the paper predicts. In the medium term the only solution for German politics is a new coalition, the paper says. "But … without new elections, that's hardly realistic."