It was not exactly a flying start. For several hours on Tuesday, Friedrich Merz faced the prospect of being forced to bow out before he had even been sworn in as Germany’s new chancellor.
His election by the Bundestag should have been a formality. But a shock rebellion – from within his own conservative-led coalition – forced him into a nail-biting and unprecedented second round.
Merz survived that second round. All-out political drama was averted, and he officially became the 10th German chancellor since the second world war. But it was hardly the triumphant first day in the job he had foreseen.
Inaugural visits to European allies were already in the diary ahead of ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe on Thursday. A 10-litre beer keg had been specially transported to Berlin from his home in the Sauerland region for the celebration, according to Der Spiegel.
Instead, Merz was, as Die Zeit columnist Jörg Lau put it, “humbled and weakened”. He even had to turn to the opposition Greens and the far-left Die Linke to agree to procedural change so the second round could take place on Tuesday.
The governing parties – the conservative CDU/CSU have coalesced with the Social Democrats – are now keen to play down the false start as a hiccup. And he got there in the end, so does it matter?
In eight decades, no previous German chancellor has failed to be elected by legislators in a first round. But this is about more than Merz’s wounded pride. His newly formed alliance was meant to end months of instability at a time when Germany faces profound challenges. The economy, supposed to be Europe’s powerhouse, is in trouble; public trust in mainstream political parties is on the slide, and the far right AfD (newly designated an extremist force by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency) is surging. The worry is that ongoing instability could drive disillusioned voters further to the extremes.
For Lau, the setback raises concern for the health of the incoming coalition. “This is a sign of a new degree of fragmentation and instability in the German party system. It is certain to affect the way this new administration will govern.”
Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes are the authors of Broken Republik: The Inside Story of Germany’s Descent into Crisis. (German edition: Totally kaputt? Wie Deutschland sich selbst zerlegt.) In a prescient opinion piece for the Guardian ahead of Tuesday’s Bundestag drama, they predicted that Merz would struggle to unite a deeply divided Germany. And they suggested that the petulant, swaggering and relatively untested former corporate lawyer would be simply too polarising a figure for the job.
I asked them why they thought things almost came unstuck for Merz quite so soon. “That’s still a riddle,” they told me. “But a lot of MPs had axes to grind with Merz. Social Democrats were angry with his taboo-breaking flirtation with the far-right AfD over migration in February, and conservatives were upset with the U-turn he has performed on debt-spending. Having campaigned on fiscal restraint, Merz made a sudden U-turn to unlock hundreds of billions of euros in borrowing. Still, the vote was a shock. We gasped when we heard it.”
The far right is seeking to make political capital from the Bundestag drama. Alice Weidel, the AfD co-leader, crowed that Merz was, “damaged goods” and she demanded fresh elections. So far, so predictable.
Yet, for Reiter and Wilkes, the early defeat is a blow to Merz’s authority. “He was already limping in to this vote, with polls and approval ratings against him, but now the question has to be asked if he can even really count on his own allies. Some will seize on the event as proving the AfD’s claim that Germany’s political system is broken.”
And if he cannot rely on his own coalition, will he be able to deliver on any of his domestic plans such as rebooting the economy and rolling out a vast programme of defence spending? “That’s the trillion-euro question, which is about how much spending power there is at Merz’s disposal now. He’ll have to tread very carefully from here on out.”
Yet, they stressed: “It might be the silver lining of this humiliation, because it means Merz might have to be more inclusive and listen to other people’s views – in contrast to his usual top-down style.”
Relief across Europe
‘Germany is back’ … the Bundestag in Berlin. Photograph: Liesa Johannssen/Reuters
