(ANSA-AFP) - BERLIN, 25 NOV - The German government on Wednesday agreed on September 26 next year for the general election to choose a successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, a government spokeswoman said. Merkel has said she will not stand for a fifth term and will retire from politics next year after 16 years at the helm of Europe's top economic power and the EU's most populous country. Her departure will mark a new, less certain phase in German politics and at the heart of the European Union, whose rotating presidency Merkel currently holds. The government "proposes to the federal president the date of Sunday, September 26, 2021 for the election of the 20th Bundestag (lower house of parliament)," spokeswoman Martina Fietz told reporters. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier must still give his official approval. (ANSA-AFP).