Merkel challenger against banks tapping euro bailout fund

Peer Steinbrueck has had a bad year so far.

His popularity rates are less than a third of those of Chancellor Angela Merkel and his Social Democratic party is also trailing behind Merkel's Christian Democrats just 100 days before the September elections.

Speaking to foreign journalists in Berlin on Thursday (13 June), Steinbrueck admitted that Merkel is more popular. But he said it was because she is giving Germans a false sense of security, while social disparities in the countr...