Bundestag Stings Friedrich Merz the first day

The day he should have marked the political coronation of Friedrich Merz began with a state of celebration.

With a view to a flat in Parliament full, futures ministers of the Cabinet, honest and family guests sat in the higher grandstands of the Bundestag, dressed in their best Sunday to witness the election of the Christian Democrat as a tenth Chancellor of the postwar period in Germany.

Among the attendees, former chancellor and a lot of time Merz Rival: Angela Merkel sat down with the Finance Minister Jörg Kukies and the future Minister of Economy Katherina Reiche. Merz’s wife, Charlotte, flanked by the two couple’s daughters, stirred and smiled.

Then Bundestag President Julia Klöckner gave the impressive news: Merz had been out of the absolute majority required, a first in the 80 years of history of the Federal Republic. The conservative leader, who has meant that he had led 10 liters of beer to Berlin from his house in Sauerland to celebrate the post, fell six less than 316 votes required, although his coalition occupies 328 seats.

With the audience who was in a state of shock, Merz and his partner of the Lars Klingbeil coalition, co-liter of the Social Democrats and the future Vice-Rector, retired to their barracks for a balance. Furious efforts began to find the dissidents and gather the numbers to reschedule a second round of voting. A few hours later, Merz finally assured the majority he needed.

But the episode destroyed something that most recently elected Chancellor Award: authority. The vote was the most lively example of the challenge to face Merz throughout his term. The 69 -year -old Chancellor is on the mission of reforming the largest economy in Europe at a time political And economic disorder, and depends on a fine parliamentary majority of razor to do so.

“Historical. This is absolutely historical. No chancellor has never lost a first vote,” said political scientist Andrea Römmele in Bundestag. “No one expected it.”

“It shows how fragile is the whole coalition,” added Römmele. “This has weak it, just as everyone in Europe is looking and waiting for Germany to return.”

There could be few alleged for the new coalition after an intense six-month election cycle, which was supposed to draw a line in years of bickering under the outgoing coalition Olaf Scholz, which collapsed in November.

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right alternative for Germany, and his faction was revealed in the discomfort. He asked for new elections between the voting rounds, while his co-lider, Tino Chrupalla, stated: “It’s a good day for Germany.”

With a total of 328 seats in Parliament, the Merz coalition between its CDU, the German Bavaria party, the CSU and the SPD, has a majority of 13 places.

With no way to identify dissidents in a secret vote, but with only a good handful of missing votes, Merz and Klingbeil decided that their best option was to reschedule the vote the same day, while deputies were all in the capital. His hope: those who used their vote in protest had realized the gravity of their elections.

The rumors turned from the corners of the CDU that the dissidents were deputies unhappy with Klingbeil. They disagreed with their cabinet appointments the day before and many were angry at their rapid movement, following the worst election results of the SPD since 1887, to cease their power to gain the leadership of their party’s parliamentary grouping, or so was the theory.

But the SPD deputies rejected the blame. Public irritation signs to Merz were noted within their own conservative blog after hugging suddenly a loosening of the country’s constitutional debt limit and a package of € 1 costs for military infrastructure and infrastructure.

“Merz has offended a lot of people. Klingbeil has also offended a lot of people,” said Römmele.

One of the main officers of the CDU, lunch with staff at one of the restaurants in Bundestag while waiting anxiously to see if a second vote could take place on Tuesday, insisted that he had no way to know if the CDU-CSU members had voted against Merz.

“He would have said we were united,” he said. “But the SPD would probably have said the same. We will never know because it was a secret vote.”

The paste occurs when Germany faces acute external and internal challenges that minify the foundations of the Renaissance of the country after World War II.

Long, an accredited Atlantic, Merz has to deal with a North -American administration and more and more hostile under Donald Trump who seeks to reduce his commitment to defense with Europe, which has been the post -war security bed in Germany.

Trump’s threat to imposing commercial tariffs on EU goods could unveil export to this year, after several years of stagnation.

Hati was a humiliating show for any measure. The Chancellor SPD outgoing Scholz, who had received the traditional farewell from the Bundeswehr brass band last night, went to the chancellery.

A series of ceremonies scheduled for Tuesday afternoon between the former and the new ministers were waiting, and a trip planned to visit the French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron in Paris the next day.

At home, Merz has billed his coalition with the SPD as an attempt at the last trench of the main parties to stop the increase in the far -right AfD. The party, which ended second in the February election with more than one fifth of the votes, is from Coll and Coll to the polls with the CDU and aims at first in the next election, scheduled for 2029.

But some analysts sought to face the importance of short drama. In 1949, the CDU head, Konrad Adenauer, was elected Chancellor to Parliament by a vote, such as Helmut Kohl, another CDU chancellor in 1994.

“It is a single one, a few deputies wanted to send a signal,” said Andreas Busch, a professor of political science at the University of Göttingen. “Merz has the support of his coalition.”

“Today’s events have been a call of awakening, but it does not launch a lasting shadow about Merz’s administration,” said Armin Steinbach, a teacher at the Paris Hec business school. “Voters forget. If the Government is successful, no one will remember.”

He added: “The message to Merz is that he has to become a unifying figure, less polarizing than in the past.”