Wednesday, May 7 2025 | Time 03:19 Hrs(IST)
WorldPosted at: May 6 2025 9:47PM


Friedrich Merz elected Germany's Chancellor in second round voting

Berlin, May 6 (UNI) Friedrich Merz, Germany’s conservative leader, was elected as the country's 10th Chancellor by parliament on Tuesday in a second round of voting, after suffering a shocking defeat in the first attempt.
In the second round, Merz secured 325 votes, just over the needed 316 votes.
Earlier in the day 18 unnamed rebels from the newly-formed alliance between his conservatives and the Social Democrats had voted to deprive him of the required majority in the secret ballot.
“Madam Speaker, thank you for the trust,” a visibly relieved Merz told the Bundestag president, Julia Klöckner, after she announced the result. “I accept the election.”
Merz, 69, leads the centre-right CDU/CSU bloc, which won February’s snap election with a disappointing 28.6%.
Earlier in the day, Merz narrowly lost the first round of voting, securing 310 votes — six votes less than what was needed to secure a majority in the Bundestag, according to BBC.
This comes after his party, the CDU, won the federal elections in Germany back in February with 28.6%.
The country’s right-wing party, the AFD, had come second after securing over 20.8% of the votes.
The shaky start to Merz’s four-year term points to potential divisions in the coalition’s ranks.
Merz, a corporate lawyer who made a fortune in the private sector, has never led a state government or a ministry. He has promised “strong, well-planned and dependable governance … in times of profound change, of profound upheaval” when he signed the coalition pact on Monday.
The AfD co-leader Alice Weidel had welcomed the earlier debacle, posting on X that Merz's failure to win a majority in the first round “shows what a weak foundation the small coalition is built on”.
Merz is to travel to both Paris and Warsaw on Wednesday, signalling a return to German leadership within the EU after six months of political limbo since Olaf Scholz’s government collapsed in acrimony.
Earlier, Merz had made it clear that he expected to easily secure a majority in parliament, given that his CDU and its coalition partners, the centre-left SPD, have 328 seats in parliament combined, which should be considerably more than the 316 needed.


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