Merz meets Scholz to discuss transition – DW – 02/25/2025

Friedrich Merz was at the Chancellery in Berlin on Tuesday for closed-door talks with outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

It is assumed that the two would talk about the transition phase ahead of coalition talks between Merz’s CDU and Scholz’s SPD after both parties confirmed exploratory meetings.

Earlier in the day, Merz met with other conservative leaders including Markus Söder, and bloc parliamentary leader Thorsten Frei.

The SPD has signaled that it will not roll over easily as Germany’s two major parties brace for tense coalition talks.

On Monday night, SPD co-chair Lars Klingbeil gave an interview to public broadcaster ZDF where he made it clear what the CDU is up against.

Klingbeil said that his party would “never shirk” its duty when called to govern the country, but stressed that the Social Democrats could not be blamed if negotiations were protracted. It is the responsibility of the winning party to make sure they do not become so, he said.

Moreover, he added that “it is no secret that Friedrich Merz has deepened the rift with the SPD in recent weeks.” Klingbeil was alluding to a highly controversial debate where the CDU proposed a series of strict new immigration laws — laws that judicial experts warned were illegal under German law.

Merz refused to comment on a claim from AfD co-leader Alice Weidel that he had sought the AfD’s support ahead of the vote. The measures ultimately failed, and afterwards Merz denied accusations he had torn down the AfD “firewall,” a long-standing agreement in German politics no to collaborate with a far-right party.

The SPD will require assurances that the CDU has “clear boundaries against the AfD” before the party will consider signing a coalition agreement.

Election results since German reunification in the 1990s show how the makeup of parliament, the Bundestag, has changed from being dominated by two major parties (the CDU and SPD) to between five and seven parties fighting for seats.

Although the increasing popularity of smaller parties like the Greens and the Left has resulted in more choice for German voters, it has made it more difficult to form cohesive coalitions that represent at least 50% of voters.

The diverging interests of the last coalition of the SPD, Greens, and FDP caused the government to collapse last November, prompting the snap election.

Complicating matters further, most parties are not willing to work with the far-right AfD, which won the second-highest number of seats at Sunday’s election.

Markus Söder, the leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the CSU, said that in light of Germany’s precarious economic and foreign policy situations, the center-right bloc and the center-left SPD had a duty to build a coalition and get to work.

“We have to pull ourselves together to form a government that solves our migration issues and our economic issues,” Söder told public broadcaster ARD.

With Europe no longer able to count of the US under President Donald Trump for support in matters of defense and foreign affairs, all eyes are on Germany to see whether this can be accomplished quickly.

Söder acknowledged that the debt brake, Germany’s mechanism for regulating spending, remains a major hurdle. The conservative bloc is hesitant to change it, while the SPD has been advocating for reforms for months, insisting that the country must be prepared to spend more public funds on modernizing infrastructure and other necessary improvements.

The Bavarian leader called the upcoming negotiations “tricky,” and said he hopes that the SPD doesn’t introduce new hurdles to the process.

Sunday’s election has cemented the far-right AfD party’s rhetoric in the Gemrany political landscape.

The party’s vote share has nearly doubled from the last federal election and it has made substantial gains in eastern Germany in particular, helped by anti-immigrantion talk. 

DW spoke to voters in the city of Frankfurt (Oder), on the border with Poland, where some are trying to make sense of the results while others are not surprised at all.

The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), along with its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) came out top in Sunday’s vote with 28.6%.

They were followed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 20.8%.

The two parties remaining in the outgoing coalition government, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, won 16.4% and 11.6% respectively.

The only other party to make it past the 5% hurdle to enter the German parliament was the Left Party which saw its vote jump to 8.8%.

The other former member of the coalition government, the Free Democrats (FDP), did not manage to get passed the 5% hurdle, securing only 4.3% of the vote.

With the CDU’s Friedrich Merz already ruling out a coalition with the far-right AfD, it remains to be seen whether another coalition can successfully be pieced together.

Thank you for joining us as we continue to keep you up-to-date on the latest developments following Germany’s federal election on Sunday.

The first moves have already been made toward forming a coalition government after center-right bloc (CDU/CSU) won, but failed to secure a majority over the weekend.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz has said he favors a coalition with the center-left SPD, but the various parties will first have to convene among themselves to discuss who they are happy to work with and where they are willing to make compromises.