Friedrich Merz passes the second attempt and is now Chancellor of Germany.

BerlinConservative Friedrich Merz is now, indeed, Chancellor of Germany. He achieved this in a second round of voting in the Bundestag on Tuesday afternoon, after failing in his first attempt in the morning. In an unexpected turn of events, unprecedented in the country's history, Merz fell six votes short of the necessary majority to be elected. He needed 316 votes, but obtained only 310, although the conservative CDU-CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party, with which he has formed a coalition government, have a combined total of 328 seats. The result of the first round of voting highlights the fragility of the majority of the governing coalition of Europe's leading economic power. But six hours later, Merz has finally become head of government of Germany.

In this second round of voting, the CDU candidate obtained 325 votes in favor and 289 against. There was one abstention. By this morning, of the 630 deputies, 621 had voted: 310 in favor of Merz and 307 against. There was also one spoiled vote and three abstentions. Bundestag President Julia Klöckner suspended the parliamentary session so that the groups could decide how to proceed. According to the German Constitution, the lower house had 14 days to elect Merz or another candidate for chancellor with an absolute majority. However, to avoid a further political crisis, it was decided not to wait too long and to call a second vote for early afternoon.

Merz's failure in the first round surprised everyone inside and outside the Bundestag. It was the first time such a thing had happened in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Before the vote, Merz and the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Lars Klingbeil, had asserted that they had enough votes to elect the chancellor. The leaders of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) officially signed the coalition agreement in Berlin on Monday, and in principle, they had a 12-vote margin in the vote in Parliament—amounting to 328 of the 630 seats in the parliament.

However, the vote was secret, and therefore involved a certain risk. At the moment, it is not known which deputies did not vote in favor of the conservative candidate, nor whether the rebels or absentees came from the Christian Democrats or Social Democrats.

Once elected by Parliament, Merz went to Bellevue Palace in Berlin, the residence of the German head of state, and the President of the Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, presented him with the document formalizing his appointment. Merz will then return to the Bundestag to be sworn in by the speaker of the lower house and officially present his cabinet, which consists of a total of 17 ministers. Following the tradition of previous chancellors, Merz plans to make his first trip to Paris and then jump to Warsaw. +

The current Chancellor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, was dismissed on Monday evening with aLarger Zapfenstreich, a military retreat with torches and music played by the army band, following the tradition of this country.

The far right is demanding Merz withdraw

"A good day for Germany," reacted Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, after the events in the Bundestag in the morning. The fact that Merz was the first candidate for chancellor to fail in the first round of voting demonstrates "the weak foundation on which the small coalition between the CDU-CSU and the SPD was built, which was defeated by the citizens," added the AfD co-leader and leader of the opposition, who "believes that" early elections.

The Left Party (Die Linke) considered the result a vote of no confidence in Merz. "If he doesn't even have the trust of his own people, how will he win the trust of the people who struggle with real everyday problems?" the party's leader, Jan van Aken, told the German press.

Merz's investiture comes six months after the breakup of the coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals led by ScholzFormer chancellors Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz, as well as Merz's wife and daughters, attended Tuesday's historic session in Parliament. Merkel, her eternal rival in the party, attended the session seated in the visitors' gallery, as she is not a member of the Bundestag. Scholz, on the other hand, sat in the chamber, as after leaving the chancellery he will continue his political activity as a member of the SPD. Scholz won a direct mandate in the February federal elections for Potsdam, his constituency.