The leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party agrees that she should remain in office until her term ends in autumn 2021, magazine Der Spiegel cited the party's current leader as saying on Tuesday.
"Regarding this legislative period, it's a fact that the party chair and the chancellorship are in different hands," Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU), said.
"There were no voices in the party's committee and federal board on Monday that saw that differently," she added. "On the contrary there was, without exception, the expectation that we would govern in the current constellation until the end of the legislative period. So with Angela Merkel as chancellor."