German Chancellor Angela Merkel has no plans to open a personal Twitter account, a news weekly reported Sunday, despite Europe's top economy counting down to general elections.

While the US president, Britain's prime minister and even Pope Benedict XVI tweet, Der Spiegel noted that 58-year-old Merkel remains "abstinent" although she is fighting for re-election in September.

"No, there aren't any concrete plans," the magazine quoted her spokesman Steffen Seibert as saying, who himself is active on Twitter and has more than 83,000 followers.

Merkel's main opposition challenger in the elections, Peer Steinbrueck, has a Twitter account on which it states that his Social Democratic Party team tweets and "now and then" he himself does.

Spiegel quoted a Twitter spokesman as saying they would "of course be glad" if Merkel used the messaging platform.