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Friedrich Merz has been confirmed as Germany’s new chancellor but the process was not as smooth as he would have liked – and that’s an understatement.
So what just happened?
After lengthy negotiations, Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance formally signed a coalition agreement with the Social Democrats (SPD) on Monday. The arrangement, billed as “taking responsibility for Germany”, technically gives them 328 votes in the new parliament.
But in a critical vote on Tuesday morning, expected to be a formality, Merz failed to secure the necessary backing of 316 and returned only 310 votes in favour, meaning that 18 of the coalition parties’ parliamentarians failed to vote for him.
It was the first time in Germany’s postwar history that this had happened, and it was a huge personal embarrassment for Merz, who has repeatedly said that, with his government, “Germany is back” and ready to offer much needed stability in European politics.
But in a second vote later on Tuesday, he won 325 votes in the 630-member assembly, with 289 voting against, attaining an absolute majority.
Who voted against?
We still don’t know. Both votes were held as secret ballots, meaning there is no list of individual votes. Were the dissenting voices from the SPD or has the former banker already got enemies within his own conservative alliance?
What happens now?
The new chancellor’s team will be keen to put today’s drama behind him as he gets on with the business of running the country and will be eager to dismiss the initial defeat as a blip.
Merz has plans to visit Paris and Warsaw on Wednesday on his first foreign trips, followed by VE Day events on Thursday and a Nato meeting on Friday. All of which are chances for him to play the part of the statesman, not the embattled leader badly bruised before he’s even begun.
What can we learn from Tuesday’s drama?
We always knew this was going to be a volatile parliament and today’s vote just underscored that. Merz got there in the end but his coalition is fragile and, clearly, support is not solid even among the two governing parties.
The far-right AfD party, meanwhile, made the most of the chaos. They have long argued that the “black-red” coalition would end up failing sooner rather than later.
In a social media post, the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel said the vote “demonstrates the weak foundation” on which the coalition is built and later called for a snap election.
Her party is already coming top in some polls, partly because of the growing disillusionment with mainstream parties and frustration with the pace of the government-forming process.
Any further gains by the AfD would seriously question the idea the party can be kept behind the “firewall” that seeks to keep it on the margins of German politics.
But the party also faces serious reputational and legal problems after Germany’s domestic intelligence agency formally listed it as an extremist group.
The party said it would appeal against the designation.
