Brussels – Good second take. It was a busy day at the Bundestag for Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s conservatives, who came close to seeing his lifelong dream of becoming federal chancellor fade away. After setting an all-time (negative) record by missing the election on the first ballot, the leader of the CDU won the vote in the second round, for which an absolute majority of the members of the House was still needed.
Now it is official: the tenth Bundeskanzler since the postwar period will be Friedrich Merz. The 69-year-old leader of the CDU was elected today (May 6) by the Berlin parliament on the second ballot with 325 votes in favour, 289 against, one abstention and three void ballots (to which 12 absentee ballots were added). An outcome that was thought to be a foregone conclusion, based on last February’s election results, but which until early afternoon seemed dangerously precarious.
In the morning, assembly members had dealt a very serious blow (unprecedented in the history of the Bundesrepublik) to the Christian Democratic leader’s political credibility, granting him only 310 “yes” votes on the first ballot. That is six fewer than those needed in the 21st legislature, inaugurated in late March, where the absolute majority is set at 316 seats out of 630. But, above all, 18 fewer than those of the same majority that Merz is preparing to lead: a “big coalition” between the Union (the CDU plus Markus Söder’s Bavarian CSU) and the Social Democrats of the SPD, which in the House holds 328 seats.
This morning’s vote was followed by general shock, especially among the benches of the future government partners, where, in all likelihood, there were rogue voters during the secret ballot. But the hemicycle rearranged a second vote within a few hours, with the consensus of all parliamentary groups.
After the parliamentary investiture, Merz will go back and forth between the Bundestag and the presidential palace: after being formally appointed to head the executive branch by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, he will have to take an oath on the Constitution in the Parliament, then return to the president to appoint the entire cabinet and then back to the hemicycle to swear in the entire government team. Finally, he will pick up the baton from the outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and, at that point, Germany will officially have a new executive fully in office.
Merz will thus be able to attend the complete list of institutional engagements with which his agenda for the coming days is already full: tomorrow he will be in Paris and Warsaw to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, while on Thursday he will preside over ceremonies in Berlin to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II before traveling to Brussels on Friday (May 9) where he will see the leaders of the Twenty-Seven and NATO allies.
Red-black majority partners had reached an understanding on the government agenda in early April, while just yesterday the final list of the ministerial team was made public. Not even twenty-four hours ago, Merz promised “a strong” and “reliable” government to lead Germany “in times of profound change.” To be sure, this morning’s misstep is not a good viaticum for conservatives and socialists, who face a series of momentous challenges to get the Old Continent’s leading economy back on track and reclaim Berlin’s traditional leadership role in the EU.
Warm congratulations, dear Friedrich Merz @Federal Chancellor, on your appointment as Federal Chancellor of Germany. Herzlichen Glückwunsch!
I am looking forward to our work together on an ambitions common European agenda.
I am very much looking forward to our collaboration for a… pic.twitter.com/hTO0JfFums
– António Costa (@eucopresident)
May 6, 2025
While the congratulations from European leaders and EU summits began to arrive, AfD group leader Bernd Baumann branded Merz’s defeat in the first ballot as a “failure” and noted that “this government is beginning (his tenure, ed.) in a very unstable manner and will continue to remain unstable.”
The party led by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, which would be the only one to benefit from a potential return to the ballot box, has been officially recognised as a “right-wing extremist organization” by the Federal Counterintelligence Services (BfV) last Friday (May 2), concluding an investigation that lasted about three years.
