Berlin, September 27 (BNA): Germany is embarking on a long search for its next government after the center-left Social Democrats narrowly beat outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc in an election that failed to set a clear direction for Europe. The largest economy under the new leader.
Party leaders in the newly elected parliament gathered on Monday to internalize an outcome that sent Merkel’s union bloc down to its worst result ever in a national election and appeared to put the keys to power in the hands of both opposition parties, The Associated Press reports.
Both Social Democrat Olaf Schulz, whose party has pulled out of a years-long stagnation, and Armin Laschet, Merkel’s party candidate who has seen his party’s fortunes falter in a turbulent campaign, claim leadership of the next government. Schulz is the outgoing Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister, and Lachette is the governor of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Whichever becomes chancellor will do so with his party winning a smaller share of the vote than any of his predecessors. Who gets the job likely depends on who the business-friendly environmental Greens and Liberal Democrats — parties that traditionally belong to competing ideological camps — decide to join government. Neither Schulze nor the weak Lachet has much influence.
The only other option that would have a parliamentary majority would be to repeat the “grand coalition” of the Union and the Social Democrats. This is the grouping that has run Germany for 12 years of Merkel’s 16-year presidency and has often been marred by squabbles, but this time it will be led by Schulz with Merkel’s bloc as junior partner. However, there is little appetite for it.
Merkel’s outgoing government will remain in power until her successor is sworn in, a process that could take weeks or months. Merkel announced in 2018 that she would not run for a fifth term.
The Green Party has traditionally leaned toward the Social Democrats and the Liberal Democrats toward the Union, but neither ruled out going the other way on Sunday night. The Greens made big gains in the election to finish third, but fell far short of their original goal of being chancellor, while the Liberal Democrats slightly improved with a good score from 2017.
Julia Rauschenbach, a political analyst at the University of Bonn, told ARD TV that the Laschet-led government was “not in principle excluded”, although the Social Democrats would make the argument that the outcome shows Germans want them to lead the new administration. . “Ultimately, of course, the parties will have to agree on the substance,” she said.
The final official results gave the Social Democrats 25.7% of the vote and the Union 24.1%. Four years ago they won 20.5% and 32.9%, respectively. The union – made up of Laschet’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union – has never participated in less than 31% of the national parliamentary elections.
The Greens got 14.8%, the Free Democrats 11.5%, and the far-right Alternative for Germany got 10.3% – down from the 12.6% it needed to enter parliament for the first time in 2017. The smallest party in the new parliament is the Left. The party that received only 4.9% of the vote.
The new Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, will have a record number of 735 deputies. The size of Parliament varies due to the specificity of the German electoral system, which means that it can be much larger than the minimum of 598 seats.
The Social Democrats won 206 seats, the Union 196, the Greens 118, the Free Democrats 92, the Alternative for Germany 83 and the Left Party 39. One seat went to the Danish minority party SSW, which will be represented for the first time in decades. .
RAE