A cornerstone of Merz’s campaign was to uphold Germany’s strict constitutional borrowing limit known as the debt brake.
Conservative leader Friedrich Merz initially failed on Tuesday to gain enough votes to be elected chancellor by the German Parliament.
Hours later, however, in a dramatic second round, Merz rallied to secure 325 votes and formally claim the chancellorship.
What was supposed to be a shoo-in turned into a shock defeat for Merz, who became the first candidate since the establishment of the parliament at the end of World War II to fail to garner the majority support needed.
In February’s general election, Merz’s center-right CDU won the highest number of votes at 22.5 percent,
falling short of a majority. After lengthy negotiations, the CDU made an agreement with the center-left SPD to form a coalition government.
Lawmakers were widely expected to back Merz as chancellor in what was considered a formality in a vote in the lower house of parliament.
Merz won just 310 votes in the first round of voting, Bundestag President Julia Kloeckner said. He needed 316 to secure a majority.
However, just hours after his defeat, the vote was re-run and he was elected chancellor.
Merz
has vowed
never to govern with the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came in second in the general election, even though doing so would ensure a clear majority.
AfD leader Alice Weidel
told The Epoch Times that the result was “a sign of instability” within the CDU-SPD coalition. “Friedrich Merz is unable to rally his own ranks. And that is the opposite of what this country needs. This country needs stability,” she said.
She also called for new elections.
“What I’m demanding is simply to clear the way. We should hold new elections. We need a stable government. And voters want a center-right government,” she added.
The BBC
reported that former Chancellor Angela Merkel had come to the Bundestag to watch the vote take place.
“As of tomorrow, you will have a government that is determined to move Germany forward through reforms and investments,” Merz said on
Monday after his full cabinet was unveiled.
Volker Resing, who wrote the recent biography “Friedrich Merz: His Path to Power,” said he was surprised at something he said that “has never happened before” in post-war Germany.
“It shows how fragile the coalition’s situation is and that some lawmakers are prepared to spread uncertainty—that’s a warning signal,” Resing
said after the first vote.
In January, Merz vowed permanent border controls after a deadly knife attack in Bavaria and the arrest of an Afghan illegal immigrant.
A cornerstone of Merz’s campaign was to uphold Germany’s strict constitutional borrowing limit known as the
debt brake, or Schuldenbremse.
In the
CDU manifesto, it said: “Now is the time to ... uphold the debt brake enshrined in the German Constitution (Grundgesetz). Today’s debts are tomorrow’s tax increases.”
In March, CDU and its potential coalition partner, the center-left SPD, passed legislation for a 500 billion euro ($543 billion) fund, financed by borrowing, for infrastructure in Germany over the next 12 years to support its
struggling economy.
Last week, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency officially classified AfD as
“extremist.”
A survey by Ipsos in
March showed that the AfD party topped the polls for the first time.
AfD announced that it was suing the country’s domestic intelligence service for classifying it as a “right-wing extremist organization.”
The designation subjects the party, which came second in the national elections in February, to greater surveillance from state authorities.
The AfD initiated legal proceedings at an administrative court in the city of Cologne, where the domestic intelligence service has its headquarters.
A
statement from joint leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel said the lawsuit was sending a “clear message against the abuse of state power” and that the designation was designed to “suppress and marginalize the opposition.”
Reuters, The Associated Press, and Guy Birchall contributed to this report.
