Everything had been set until now. After his conservative CDU/CSU political union won the elections last February, Merz hammered out a coalition deal with the centre-left SPD, including constitution-tweaking measures to remove the debt brake so Germany could splurge on defence and infrastructure investment. SPD members backed the deal last week, their leaders formally signed the deal yesterday with the CDU/CSU, and last night, as part of a quirky German transition tradition, a military band performed a jaunty concert for the outgoing chancellor, the SPD’s Olaf Scholz.
The defeat was not, as initially thought, due to absentee MPs, which would be embarrassing enough. Rather, it was because members in Merz’s own coalition voted against him.
Merz casts his vote during the election of a new Chancellor at the Bundestag in Berlin on Tuesday (Photo: Markus Schreiber/ AP)So why did Merz fail to win the vote?
Alice Weidel, right, co-chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, at the Bundestag (Photo: Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Germany’s partners – especially France, Poland, Britain and the European Union authorities – are broadly hopeful that Merz can bring Berlin back to the fore at a perilous moment for Europe, after the torpor of the ultra-cautious Scholz. His defence plans and his outspoken criticism of US President Donald Trump suggest he is ready to revive the Franco-German motor driving the EU along with French President Emmanuel Macron.
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In the February 23 elections, his CDU-CSU alliance secured just 28.5 per cent of the vote, while the AfD – which Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency classified last week as a “proven” extremist organisation – came second with 20.8 per cent. In the weeks since, this already thin margin has vanished: last month, a poll put the AfD on 26 per cent and the CDU/CSU on 25 per cent.
AfD leader Alice Weidel predictably responded to Bundestag debacle by calling for snap elections. That won’t happen: Merz will almost certainly find a way to clinch the vote and be sworn in as chancellor. However, it is a reminder that for all his achievements in cobbling a coalition and setting a new direction for Germany, his position is far from assured.
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