EUROPEAN leaders got the jitters yesterday over prospects of a snap German election after coalition government talks collapsed on Sunday night.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned of “incomprehension and great concern inside and outside our country … if the political forces in the biggest and economically strongest country in Europe of all places don’t fulfil their responsibility.”

Germany may have to hold a second general election if Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens cannot agree to share power.

FDP leader Christian Lindner defended his decision to walk out of the talks, saying that proposals on refugees, the economy and education were unacceptable.

“If the FDP had agreed to these, we would have had to abandon our fundamental positions,” he said.

Mr Lindner said on Sunday that there was “no basis of trust” between him and Ms Merkel.

Social Democratic Party chairman Martin Schulz ruled out a third “grand coalition” government yesterday after the previous collaboration led his party to its worst showing since WWII. He said that the SPD was “not available,” adding: “It was clear that the ‘grand coalition’ had got the red card.”

The far-right Alternative for Germany, the third-largest party with 94 seats in the Bundestag, remains an outcast for now.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed concern, saying: “It’s not in our interest for it to get tense.”

Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra, whose country took seven months to form a coalition government after the Islamophobic Party for Freedom came second in March’s election, said that new elections would be the “worst scenario.”

“It will become difficult to take important decisions in Brussels,” he said.

Spain was also ruled by an interim government from December 2015 to October last year after two general elections returned hung parliaments.