Friedrich Merz’s conservatives have won Germany’s election, well ahead of rival parties but short of the 30 percent vote-share they had expected.
“Let’s celebrate tonight and in the morning we’ll get to work,” he told cheering supporters. His immediate priority is to try to form a government with the third-placed Social Democrats of Olaf Scholz.
Even before the result was clear, Merz said his top priority was unity in Europe, so that “step by step, we can really achieve independence from the US”.
The other big winner in Sunday’s vote was the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who are celebrating a record second-place result of 20.8 percent.
The AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, did a victory lap of her supporters, but even her party had hoped for a greater result and the mood at AfD HQ was subdued.
Merz, 69, has never held a ministerial job, but he has promised if he becomes the next German chancellor to show leadership in Europe and beef up support for Ukraine.
Most Germans have been shocked by President Donald Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine and Europe and Friedrich Merz said the US leader had shown “the Americans are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”.
Trump has labelled Ukraine’s leader a “dictator”, and two of his leading figures have openly backed the AfD in the run-up to the vote. Vice-President JD Vance was accused of meddling in the vote during a visit to Munich, while billionaire Elon Musk has made repeated remarks on his X platform.
Friedrich Merz’s first priority will be to try to form a coalition with Scholz’s centre left, despite the Social Democrats’ worst-ever showing of 16.4 percent.
Merz’s Christian Democrat leadership will meet, as will the SPD’s, but Scholz will not take part in the talks.
Merz is keen to form a government by Easter. It could be possible, because between the two parties they have 328 seats, a majority of 12 in the 630-seat parliament.
But it was not until the early hours of Monday that that became clear.
After the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition late last year, Merz had asked the electorate for a strong mandate to form a clear-cut coalition with one other party.
In the event, he secured enough seats only because two of the smaller parties failed to get into parliament.
A two-party coalition would enable him to solve as many of Germany’s problems as he could in four years, he said, from a stagnant economy to closing its borders to irregular migrants.
