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After a surprise failure on Tuesday on Tuesday, Friedrich Merz won a parliamentary vote in the second round, which in a time of upheaval for the largest economy in Europe meets lifelong ambition.
The 69-year-old Christian Democrat, the Elections won in February And has teamed up with the Social Democrats to form a majority government was expected to have triumphed in the first round.
However, he only secured the majority of the 630-member Bundestag in his second attempt of the day with 325 votes in a secret ballot.
“Thank you for your trust,” Merz told the Bundestag after his election as 10th Chancellor after the war. “I accept the choice.”
The vote ends six months of close paralysis in the German government after the collapse of the coalition of the former Chancellor Olaf Scholz in November.
The country is facing growing economic and geopolitical threats. Donald Trump’s trade war threatens to continue to end an already stagnating German economy, even if the US President urges European capitals to invest more in their own defense.
Despite his victory in the second round, Merz showed the fragility of his support in parliament. The defeat was the first of its kind in the history of Germany after the war.
The new Chancellor who returned policy In 2018, after a decade in the private sector, only 310 votes won in the first ballot, although the coalition partners have 328 seats.
“It has never happened at the federal level,” said Henning Meyer, professor at Tübingen University. “There are clearly upset people.”
In a symbolic start of his tenure, Merz is supposed to travel to Paris on Wednesday to meet President Emmanuel Macron, and later on that day to Warsaw to meet Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The French President concluded Merz ‘success and wrote: “It is up to us to make the Franco-German engine (the EU) more than ever. It is up to us to improve our European agenda of sovereignty, security and competitiveness.”
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also congratulated Merz and added: “We sincerely hope that Germany will become even stronger and that we will see more German leadership in European and transatlantic matters.”
However, the CDU leader, who worked as a consultant at US Asset Manager Blackrock during politics, is faced with the challenge of rotating the country’s export-dependent economy, which is susceptible if Trump imposes more tariffs for EU goods.
Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, said the initial surprise on Tuesday “shows that the coalition is not united, which could weaken its ability to pursue politics”.
According to Merz, Alice Weidel, co-manager of the right-wing extremist alternative for Germany, had initially failed to secure a majority, demand new elections and argue that she revealed the “shaking frost” of his prospective coalition.
Merz has annoyed some within the more conservative wing of his CDU/CSU group by loosening the constitutional loan limit and receiving a debt expenditure program of € 1 for the modernization of the military in the country and its aging infrastructure.
During the campaign, he also annoyed many SPD deputies by giving a non -binding application to prevent the migration rules with the support of the AfD.
Lars Klingbeil, the SPD-Co-Leader, who is supposed to take office as Vice Chancellor and Minister of Finance, was also suspended with internal criticism after the election in February had brought the worst defeat of his party with only 16 percent of the votes since 1887.
The German stocks recovered from their session punches, with the Dax index had dropped by 0.5 percent until the trade in the late afternoon.
Additional reporting from Ian Smith in London