Polls open in German elections

The election which will end Angela Merkel's sixteen years in power takes place today. We discuss her foreign policy legacy.

Also on the programme, how should the west conduct diplomacy with China? And novelist Colm Toibin discusses his latest book, The Magician, a fiction about the great German writer Thomas Mann.

Our panellists this week are Cornelius Pollmer, journalist for the German daily, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung - one of Germany's biggest daily papers and Shachi Kurl, President of Angus Reid Institute, a Canadian public opinion research organization.

(Picture: Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel and CDU candidate Armin Lachet. Credit: Reuters / Rattay)