FILE - The Sept. 21, 2009 file photo shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and then German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, left, after a meeting with the German Government's task force for finance architecture at the chancellery in Berlin. Germany's main opposition party appears set to choose former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who helped pilot the country through the 2008-9 financial crisis, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in next year's election. Several German media outlets reported Friday, Sept. 28, 2012 the center-left Social Democrats have decided to nominate the 65-year-old Steinbrueck. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
FILE - The Sept. 21, 2009 file photo shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and then German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, left, after a meeting with the German Government's task force for finance architecture at the chancellery in Berlin. Germany's main opposition party appears set to choose former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who helped pilot the country through the 2008-9 financial crisis, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in next year's election. Several German media outlets reported Friday, Sept. 28, 2012 the center-left Social Democrats have decided to nominate the 65-year-old Steinbrueck. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
FILE - The Jan 12, 2007 file photo show then German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck smiling during a press conference in Berlin. Germany's main opposition party appears set to choose former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who helped pilot the country through the 2008-9 financial crisis, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in next year's election. Several German media outlets reported Friday, Sept. 28, 2012 the center-left Social Democrats have decided to nominate the 65-year-old Steinbrueck. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
FILE - In this May 15, 2012 file photo, Social Democratic politicians, from left, Peer Steinbrueck, Sigmar Gabriel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier attend a news conference in Berlin. Germany's main opposition party appears set to choose former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who helped pilot the country through the 2008-9 financial crisis, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in next year's election. Several German media outlets reported Friday, Sept. 28, 2012 the center-left Social Democrats have decided to nominate the 65-year-old Steinbrueck. (AP Photo/dapd, Michael Gottschalk, File)
FILE - The Sept. 21, 2009 file photo shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and then German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, left, briefing the media after a meeting with the German Government's task force for finance architecture at the chancellery in Berlin. Germany's main opposition party appears set to choose former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who helped pilot the country through the 2008-9 financial crisis, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in next year's election. Several German media outlets reported Friday, Sept. 28, 2012 the center-left Social Democrats have decided to nominate the 65-year-old Steinbrueck. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
BERLIN (AP) ? Germany's main opposition party is set to nominate former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who helped pilot the country through the 2008-9 financial crisis, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in elections next year.
Officials with the center-left Social Democrats wouldn't immediately confirm reports Friday in several German media outlets that the leadership had decided on Steinbrueck, 65. But the party scheduled an afternoon news conference and former Cabinet colleague Brigitte Zypries wrote on Facebook: "it's true, it's going to be him."
The choice of Steinbrueck ? one of three candidates who has been discussed for months as criticism mounted of the party's failure to settle on a challenger ? kicks off in earnest the race for the chancellery in parliamentary elections expected this time next year.
Steinbrueck earlier this week presented a plan for "taming financial markets," flagging that as a prominent issue in the party's campaign.
But polls suggest that, while Steinbrueck is relatively well-placed to attract swing voters, the Social Democrats face an uphill struggle to unseat the popular Merkel, 58, Germany's leader since 2005.
The party consistently trails her conservative Christian Democrats, and surveys show no majority for their hoped-for coalition with the Green party.
They're keen to avoid ending up as Merkel's junior partner in another "grand coalition" of right and left, the combination in which Steinbrueck served as finance minister from 2005 to 2009.
A significant source of Merkel's popularity is her handling of the eurozone debt crisis, and that's been making it hard for the Social Democrats to land blows on her. They and the Greens have criticized Merkel for what they decry as a too-little, too-late response ? before invariably supporting her plans in Parliament.
Steinbrueck has a reputation for plain speaking, which hasn't always made him popular with fellow Social Democrats. As a minister, he once remarked of his party that "we're coming over to people as crybabies" in the face of Merkel's popularity.
In 2009, he called for governments to use "the whip" against neighboring Switzerland in the fight against tax evasion and said the Alpine nation faced the threat of the "cavalry."
His successor, Wolfgang Schaeuble, has taken a more diplomatic approach, negotiating a deal with Switzerland. But with the election in sight, the Social Democrats have vowed not to let it through Parliament's upper house, where Merkel's coalition lacks a majority.
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