The conservatives of the German opposition won the national elections on Sunday, putting the party leader Friedrich Merz On the way to be the country’s next chancellor, while the far-right alternative to Germany (AFD) was in second place, his best result of all time, showed the ballot box research.
“Tonight we will celebrate, and from tomorrow we will start working…”, told Merz, 69, to the supporters.
Merz is preparing for what will probably be long negotiations aiming at a coalition. While its CDU/CSU emerged as the largest block, it obtained its second worst postwar result.
It is still unclear whether Merz will need one or two partners to form a majority.
All main parties discarded working with AFD.
After a campaign marked by a series of violent attacks and interventions from the US President’s government, the conservative bloc CDU/CSU obtained 28.7% of the votesfollowed by AfD com 19,8%according to a ballot research published by public broadcaster ZDF.
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) had its worst result since World War II, with 16,4% of the votes, according to the ZDF projection, while the greens got 12,3% and the extreme left party Die Linke with 8.9% of the votes.
Merz, who is 69, has no previous experience in the executive, but promised to exercise greater leadership than Chancellor Olaf Scholz and establish greater contact with the main allies, expanding Germany’s protagonism in the heart of Europe.
An impetuous economic liberal that has moved conservative opponents to the right, it is considered to Antithesis of former conservative chancellor Angela Merkelwho led Germany for 16 years.
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However, without a majority in a increasingly fragmented political scenariotheir conservative co -religionists will have to probe partners to form a coalition.
These negotiations will certainly be complicated after a campaign that has exposed strong divisions on the theme immigration and how to deal with AFD in a country where far right policy carries a particularly strong stigma due to the Nazi past.
This could leave Scholz in the role of interim prime minister for months, delaying the urgently necessary policies to relive Europe’s largest economy after two consecutive years of contraction and while companies in the country face difficulties against global rivals.
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O German Chancellor recognized the defeat on Sunday and congratulated his conservative opponent. “This is a bitter electoral result for the Social Democratic Party, it is also an electoral defeat,” Scholz said in a first reaction. “Congratulations on the outcome of the election,” he said in Merz directed comments.
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Markus Soeder, a premie of the state of Bavaria and CSU party leader, said he had no hope that a government could work with green as the projections see CDU as a general election winner on Sunday.
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Soeder, who had already ruled out a coalition with the green before the early election, pointed to the party immigration policies, which are in disagreement with the demands of conservatives for a harder line.
The political situation in Germany would also create a vacuum of leadership in the heart of Europe, even with the country dealing with a number of challenges, such as the threat of US President Donald Trump, a trade war and the attempt to accelerate an agreement of ceasefire to Ukraine without the involvement of the European powers.
Germany, which has an export -oriented economy and has long depends on the United States for its safety, is particularly vulnerable.
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Os Germans are more pessimistic about their life standards now than at any other time since the 2008 financial crisis.
Government attitudes towards the theme immigration have also hardened, a profound change in the feeling of the German public since the “welcome” refugee culture during the European migratory crisis in 2015, something AFD took electoral benefit.
