Merz wins vote to be Germany’s next chancellor at second attempt, hours after shock defeat
By Rob Picheta, CNN
Updated 10:32 AM EDT, Tue May 6, 2025
Website: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/06/europe/merz-chancellor-german-parliament-intl
Germany’s Friedrich Merz has won a parliamentary vote to become chancellor at the second attempt, hours after an unprecedented defeat signaled deep discontent within his coalition.
In a hastily organized session on Tuesday afternoon, 325 lawmakers voted to approve his ascension — more than the 316 he required.
Merz, who won an election in February and unveiled a ruling coalition last month, had fallen six votes short earlier in the day, a stunning setback that marked another twist in a tortuous period of uncertainty for the country.
He is now set to formally become chancellor after being approved by the German President. But his tenure will start on unstable footing: Tuesday’s votes revealed reluctance inside his coalition, and gave the insurgent far-right AfD party a new opportunity to ruffle the political establishment.
Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party won an election in February, but failed to pick up enough seats to govern outright – an outcome that is commonplace in Germany’s diverse political environment.
He last month announced he would form a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), a rare fusing of Germany’s two establishment groups that ensured the AfD – which came second in the February poll – would remain locked out of power. It extended the so-called “firewall,” a blockade against far-right groups that German politicians have kept in place since after World War II, but which has become increasingly tenuous.
The coalition has 328 seats in total, and the vote to approve a chancellor is usually a formality; never before in modern German history had a chancellor-in-waiting failed to win. But on Tuesday, on what was set to be a day of celebration, Merz’s future was briefly plunged into uncertainty.
His defeat, which had been entirely unexpected, came after weeks of attacks against his bloc from the insurgent far-right AfD party and from the increasingly intrusive Trump administration. And it exposed the early cracks within a marriage of convenience between the CDU and the SPD.
Because the vote was held by secret ballot, it was not immediately clear – and might never be known – who had defected from Merz’s camp.
But it is a rocky start for a leader who has promised to pursue an aggressive agenda.
Merz won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in March to change Germany’s constitutional “debt brake,” a mechanism to limit government borrowing. He intends to give renewed impetus to a 2022 German security policy change dubbed “Zeitenwende” – “turning point” in English – that was initiated by outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz and would see Berlin turbocharge its defense spending in an effort to modernize an ageing military.
That push was given greater urgency after US President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to end American support for Ukraine and withdraw security guarantees for Europe. Moments after he won Tuesday’s second vote, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sought to keep the effort at the top of his agenda.
“We sincerely hope that Germany will grow even stronger and that we’ll see more German leadership in European and transatlantic affairs,” Zelensky posted on X. “This is especially important with the future of Europe at stake — and it will depend on our unity.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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