History of Germany since 1990 Helmut Kohl was reelected as Chancellor for his fifth and last term. The ruling liberal-conservative coalition government, consisting of the CDU/CSU and the FDP, lost the German federal election, 1998, and Gerhard Schröder was elected as Chancellor, the head of a coalition government consisting of his own SPD party and The Greens. Joschka Fischer, a leading Green politician, became Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Shortly after the formation of the government, Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD chairman and rival of Schröder, resigned from the cabinet. He was succeeded as Minister of Finance by Hans Eichel. In 1998,
Germany–United Kingdom relations Britain secretly assured Poland of its acceptance of the latter's western boundary. West Germany had been ambiguous about the matter. Britain had long been uneasy with West Germany's insistence on the provisional nature of the boundary. On the other hand, it was kept secret so as not to antagonise Britain's key ally in its quest to enter the European Community. In 1970, West German government under the Chancellor Willy Brandt, the former mayor of West Berlin, signed a treaty with Poland recognizing and guaranteeing the borders of Poland. In 1990, United Kingdom prime minister Margaret Thatcher at first opposed German