What will the election of Merz as chancellor lead to only on the second attempt? Analysis

Friedrich Merz, the leader of the German Conservatives, has been elected Chancellor of Germany. He was able to get the required number of votes in the Bundestag only after the second round. Thus, he became the first candidate in the history of Germany, whom the ruling coalition failed to approve on the first attempt. How Germany almost faced an acute political crisis and what the hitch in voting will lead to — in the Izvestia article.

How the first round failed

• Initially, the vote to confirm Friedrich Merz as the tenth Chancellor of Germany seemed like a simple formality. The day before, the CDU/CSU and the SPD had signed a coalition agreement to form a government. The coalition won 328 mandates in the 630-seat parliament, in which 316 votes are enough to make decisions. It was expected that all members of the coalition would fulfill their obligations and support Merz in a secret ballot.

• However, 18 CDU/CSU and SPD deputies, whose names are likely to remain unknown, decided not to vote for Merz. This suggests that they generally support the points of the signed coalition agreement, but at the same time opposed the personality of the potential chancellor. There is indeed dissatisfaction with him among both Social Democrats and conservatives, and it manifested itself precisely at the moment when it was most important to show party discipline.

Why wasn't Merz supported

• Voters are left wondering who exactly violated the agreements that led to the historic hitch. The SPD should be the least suspicious — for it, participation in the coalition after the unsuccessful chancellorship of Olaf Scholz is a great success. It is unacceptable for a party to play with fire in a situation where it has lost a third of its seats after the elections. Therefore, first of all, Merz should be blamed for the failure of his own party members, whom he could have let down by departing from some of the principles of the party, such as the refusal to increase public debt and the ban on cooperation with Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Merz faded: in Germany, for the first time in history, the first round of the election of the chancellor failed

It was decided to hold a repeat vote on the same day.

• Experts admit that pure chance could have led to such a dramatic outcome of the vote. Specifically, only five of his associates voted against Merz (assuming that all opposition parties voted against him), three abstained, one ballot was declared invalid, and nine more deputies did not cast their votes at all. Some of them might well have considered that his vote would not affect the voting results, and therefore refused to actively support Merz.

How Merz was chosen in the end

• After the failure of the first round, a discussion began in the factions about when to hold the second round. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany stipulates that it must be organized within 14 days after the first one. At first, the deputies were inclined not to hold a repeat vote immediately, but to wait at least a day or postpone it altogether until the end of the week.

• It was decided to hold the next round on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 6. This time, Merz received the required number of votes — he was supported by 325 Bundestag deputies (the required minimum was 316 votes). Another voter abstained, three ballots were damaged, and 289 opposition representatives voted against the 69-year-old politician.

• The voting results showed that the ruling coalition was able to achieve Merz's election on its own and still launch the process of forming a government. Immediately before the second round, there was talk that small factions of the Greens or even the Left would support Merz, but their leaders denied this possibility and eventually did not add extra votes to him.

How will this affect the AdG

• For AfG, the situation with the failed first round was an unexpected gift. More recently, this party was recognized as a right-wing extremist organization, which made its future rather uncertain (we wrote more about this here). But now this has been overshadowed by the failure of the mainstream parties, which have been unable to form a functioning government for six months. This circumstance will certainly add to the sympathies of the tired electorate, which has already brought the party to the first place in public polls.

• The AfD hotly tried to squeeze the maximum benefit for itself from the political crisis that had arisen. Co-chair Alice Weidel called on Merz not only to abandon his claims to the post of chancellor, but also to hold new elections. For a party that is in first place in terms of popularity among voters, this would be the optimal scenario. In the end, this was not achieved, but the main opposition force for the next four years will always have a reason to accuse the ruling coalition of weakness and inability to rally even its own ranks.

• The next opportunity to put pressure on the ruling coalition will arise in about 100 days, when the first results of Merz's rule will be summed up. If he manages to achieve tangible results and implement the promised agenda, then the story of the hitch in his election as chancellor will not be continued. But if the CDU/CSU and the SPD fail to agree on key issues again, the collapse of their coalition and the next elections will be a matter of time.

Causes of instability in Germany

• Germany has been experiencing a sharp economic downturn over the past few years. After the pandemic, the country has not reached the indicators of 2019 — the EU sanctions against Russia and the collapse of the green policy played a role. All this led to deindustrialization, falling production, bankruptcies, and, as a result, increased unemployment and social instability.

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Merz's decision is not supported by his junior coalition partners.

• In addition, the traditional popular parties — the CDU, the SPD — no longer represent the interests of the population, and this has become one of the reasons for the growing popularity of the Alternative for Germany. Political elites continue to increase the degree of military rhetoric, while the interests of the population are concentrated inside the country: on gasoline prices, on the cost of electricity, etc. In conditions of economic instability, sympathies naturally flow to nationally oriented right-wing parties.

• Another trend observed in the expert community is the gradual weakening of the figure of the German leader. After the departure of Chancellor Angela Merkel, each new leader turns out to be weaker than the previous one. Thus, Merz begins the chancellor's work on an even weaker foundation than Scholz, who was not distinguished by his political will — he was nevertheless elected without a hitch. This is not least due to the fact that the ruling coalition formed following the parliamentary elections is actually an alliance against the AFD, which took second place after the elections. And many of the election promises will remain unfulfilled, for example, the vote clearly showed that the population is concerned about the problem of migrants, but the new chancellor explicitly promises to "remain a free, liberal country" and not to tighten policy towards them. The expert community notes that the political elites in Germany no longer consider it necessary to take into account the opinion of the population, which was unthinkable 20 years ago.

• The European Union is currently fighting for leadership, but the problem is that almost no one can offer a worthy candidate for this role. French President Emmanuel Macron clearly has leadership ambitions, but his own power is not solid. There is a similarity between the German and French political and economic models.

When writing the material, Izvestia talked and took into account the opinions of:

• Artyom Sokolov, a researcher at the Center for European Studies at the MGIMO Institute of International Studies;
• Vladislav Belov, Head of the Center for German Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• Alexander Kamkin, Associate Professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.