After Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won a plurality of seats in federal elections Sunday, party leader Friedrich Merz said he will pursue a governing coalition with the country’s socialist party rather than its right-wing populist party.
CDU achieved a comfortable 208 plurality in the Bundestag elections, short of the 316-seat absolute majority necessary to secure Merz’s chancellorship — meaning the party must form a coalition with another party before Merz can govern. At a celebration at the party’s headquarters Monday, the CDU leader confirmed he will pursue that coalition with the leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD), which came in third place at 120 seats — and not with the AfD, which came in second at an unprecedented 152 seats, more than doubling its presence since Germany’s 2021 election.
“We have received a clear governing mandate, and we accept it,” Merz, speaking German, said. “Looking at the Bundestag seat distribution, we are in a position to form a black-red coalition — and that is precisely what we intend to do.” This black-red coalition, better known as the “grand coalition,” is common in German parliamentary politics, with Angela Merkel notably ruling the country with this model when she was chancellor.
Pressekonferenz im Konrad-Adenauer-Haus https://t.co/5QDpJGhZQh
— Friedrich Merz (@_FriedrichMerz) February 24, 2025
Emphasizing the urgency of forming the coalition, Merz said he plans to meet with SPD leaders, including outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to negotiate the coalition in the coming days. He added he is hopeful to form the government by Easter.
The emerging CDU-SPD alliance, and its exclusion of the AfD, was expected — virtually the entire German political establishment has maligned the AfD as a dangerously radical organization since its founding in 2013, with the German state even classifying the party as a “suspected case of right-wing extremism” in 2022. The government uses this designation to justify its ongoing surveillance of party members and their private correspondences, a practice German federal courts have repeatedly confirmed as constitutional.
Merz is a proponent of the “firewall against the far right” strategy in German politics, a practice among mainstream parties that views any cooperation with the AfD as a grave moral failing. He has routinely characterized the party as a successor to the Nazis, calling the AfD “openly National Socialist” in a 2018 interview with WDR 5, a German public radio station.
“The regional associations, especially in the east, are receiving a crystal clear message from us: If any of us raise our hand to work with the AfD, then there will be a party expulsion process the next day,” he said in a statement shortly before becoming CDU leader in 2022. He reiterated this position in a January interview with Tagesthemen, a German television station, saying he “ties [his] destiny as party chairman” to preventing cooperation with the AfD.
AfD leaders reject comparisons to the Nazi Party, with former party leader Alexander Gauland calling the Nazi era a “speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history” during a 2018 speech — a stance meant to reject what they see as excessive historical guilt.
Though it initially focused on Euroskepticism, the AfD has since shifted to emphasize a mix of populist and nationalist positions, primarily opposition to immigration from Muslim-majority countries, which it frames as an existential threat to German culture and security. It calls for stricter border controls, immediate deportation of rejected asylum seekers and, most controversially, a policy of “remigration” — a term the European right uses to advocate for the mass deportation of immigrants and even some naturalized citizens deemed insufficiently assimilated.
The AfD’s friendlier disposition towards Russia, its opposition to military aid for Ukraine and its calls to revive the Nord Stream II pipeline are also major points of contention for more established German parties.
“We must now carry out large-scale repatriations, and if it is to be called ‘remigration,’ then so be it,” AfD leader Alice Weidel said at a campaign event in January.
The AfD’s stances on immigration first gained traction after the 2015 refugee crisis, when Germany accepted over a million migrants under Merkel’s leadership. The foreign-born population has been on a consistent upward trajectory since that year, nearly doubling over this period to a record-high of 19.6% — over 16.5 million — according to German census data.
Merz campaigned on a pro-NATO, pro-European Union (EU) platform, primarily advocating German independence from the United States by easing taboos against nuclear power, which he says increases Germany’s reliance on Russian and American energy — breaking from the Green Party, which largely closed Germany’s nuclear plants. He also aims to increase defense spending amid strained relations with President Donald Trump, who many see as offering Russia favorable terms in Ukraine peace talks.
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said in a post-election debate Sunday. “I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program — but after Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
The chancellor-in-waiting increased anti-immigration rhetoric after recent migrant-perpetrated violent attacks — including a January knife assault in Aschaffenburg that killed a toddler and a man — amid political pressure from the AfD, though Merz stopped short of endorsing remigration. Crime statistics show over 40% of crime suspects in Germany were foreign-born in 2023, according to Tagesthemen.
U.S.-German relations have deteriorated since President Trump took office, particularly after his allies’ incursions into German politics. Vice President JD Vance criticized Germany’s online speech policing as “Orwellian” during a Munich Security Conference speech on Feb. 14. German leaders have also condemned Elon Musk’s endorsement of the AfD, which he called “the only hope for Germany.”
AfD is the only hope for Germany
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025
AfD is the only hope for Germany Merz’s political career began after his election to the European Parliament in 1989, later transitioning to serve as a representative in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower chamber of parliament in 1994, where he served until being named CDU leader in 2021.
He previously chaired the German branch of BlackRock, an American asset management firm accused of contributing to rising single-family home prices in the United States. Merz, who owns two private jets, described himself as “upper middle class” in a 2018 interview with Bild, a German tabloid.
He added in his victory speech Monday that Merkel, the previous CDU chancellor and Merz’s longtime political rival, had yet to congratulate him on his electoral plurality. There remains no indication that Merz — or any major party leader in Germany — will loosen his “firewall” policy against the AfD, despite its surge in support Sunday.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)
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