Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz made a surprise visit to Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday.
The visit comes just days after his conservative CDU/CSU bloc emerged as the biggest party in terms of electoral seats after the German election.
What did Merz and Macron talk about?
The trip was expected to include discussions on the recent shift in US policy on the war in Ukraine, as well as European security issues.
Merz posted a photo of himself and Macron on social media late on Wednesday, thanking the French president for his “friendship” and “trust in German-French relations.”
“Together our countries can achieve great things for Europe,” Merz wrote on Instagram.
It marks Merz’s first trip outside of Germany since his center-right alliance — made up of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the state of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) — won Sunday’s election with a 28.5% share of the vote, resulting in 208 seats in the German Bundestag.
With 630 seats in the Bundestag, the conservative grouping fell well short of the number needed to form a government. The next largest party is the AfD, who garnered 152 seats after Sunday’s vote, but with Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc ruling out working with the far-right party, the conservatives are likely to look at forming a coalition with outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD).
Those coalition talks, which are far from certain to yield success, are due to begin at a critical time for the continent, with leaders concerned that US President Donald Trump could conclude a peace deal with Russia without European involvement.
Earlier this week, Washington twice sided with Moscow in votes at the United Nations.
Those votes came as Macron visited the White House, insisting that no peace agreement could be reached without Ukraine’s approval.
It remains unclear whether Macron and Trump are on the same page, despite their apparent warmth when they sat down to talk with the media as the pair rekindled their relationship from the US president’s first term.
What happens next in Germany after the election?
Meanwhile, Merz is not expected to accompany Scholz to an EU summit, scheduled to take place in Brussels next month.
The CDU/CSU chancellor candidate does not need a “government internship” nor “hand-holding” ahead of assuming power, Scholz’s spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, said on Wednesday.
The government spokesman said Scholz would not take Merz to the meeting on March 6, in which EU leaders are expected to talk over the recent shift in Washington’s Ukraine stance.
There had been speculation that Merz would join Scholz for the summit, just as Scholz accompanied Angela Merkel to a G20 gathering in Rome in late 2021, shortly after winning the German election.
However, Hebestreit dismissed the comparison, saying that Scholz had been acting in his former capacity as Merkel’s finance minister.
The center-left SPD, Germany’s oldest party, recorded its worst result in a federal election in over a century and its largest loss of votes compared to previous elections. Scholz has announced he will not serve in the next government.
Edited by. Louis Oelofse
