Conservative leader Merz only needs Social Democrats to form coalition in Germany

Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats, winners of the German general election, will be able to form a coalition government with only the Social Democrats as junior partners, without needing to include the Greens to obtain a majority of seats. The final vote has left the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance out of the Bundestag by a few hundredths of a percentage point. If this new left-wing populist party had made it into the chamber, it would have complicated the arithmetic for putting together majorities and would have forced Merz, against his will, to negotiate a three-party coalition to become chancellor.

“My absolute priority is to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we achieve independence from the United States,” said Merz on Sunday evening. The statement by the future chancellor represents a turning point for Germany, historically attached to a transatlantic relationship that is in a deep crisis following the return of Donald Trump to the White House. The leader of the Christian Democrats said that the Trump administration “is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” He said that at the NATO summit at the end of June, Europeans must consider “whether we are still talking about NATO in its current state or whether we need to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”

The final result ended hours of suspense after the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance received 4.97% of the vote, just three-tenths of a percentage point below the 5% barrier that would have allowed it to enter the Bundestag. It was necessary to wait until the early hours of Monday to be certain that there would be five, and not six, parties inside the chamber, meaning that Merz’s Christian Democratic Union/Bavarian Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) would only need the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz to achieve a majority, set at 315 seats. CDU/CSU and SPD together have 329. The so-called grand coalition is back, although in this case much reduced compared to previous experiences.

Merz and the Christian Democrats breathed a sigh of relief when these figures were announced, as they had feared being forced into negotiating a three-way coalition with the SPD and the Greens, and wanted to avoid this at all costs. They knew that a three-way government is more difficult to negotiate and, once in power, to manage, as demonstrated by the failure of the three-party coalition with the Greens and the Liberals that Scholz led from 2021 to November 2024. It was Scholz’s dismissal of Finance Minister Christian Lindner that precipitated the breakup of this coalition and led to the early elections on 23 February.

The official results show the CDU/CSU as the leading force with 28.6% of the vote, followed by the far-right Alliance for Germany (AfD) with 20.8%. The SPD came in third with 16.4%, representing its worst result ever. The Greens followed with 11.6% and the Left, the real surprise of this election, with 8.8%. In addition to the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, the liberals of the FDP were also left out of the chamber with 4.3%. The FDP leader and former minister Lindner has announced that he is quitting politics following this electoral failure.

The fact that just two parties will be enough for a coalition facilitates the talks, which Merz wants to speed up so that he can be sworn in by mid-April and have a functioning government, offering stability to Germany and Europe. Scholz announced on Sunday evening that he would not participate in the negotiations and that, having been chancellor, he would not be a minister in a coalition where the Social Democrats serve as junior partners.

On paper, the CDU/CSU and the far-right AfD have a large majority in the Bundestag, but Merz repeated on Sunday evening that he was ruling out this possibility. “We do not work with a party that is xenophobic,” he said in January, “that is anti-Semitic, that has right-wing radicals in its ranks and that has criminals in its ranks, a party that flirts with Russia and wants to leave NATO and the European Union.” The firewall, which seemed to be weakened after several recent votes by the Christian Democrats alongside the far-right AfD in the Bundestag, is still fully in force. AfD, which has achieved the best result for a party of its kind since the end of World War II, will be the second largest parliamentary force and the leading opposition group.

With the transatlantic relationship on the brink of collapse, Merz wants to negotiate quickly to put Germany back at the helm of Europe as soon as possible. In the traditional post-election debate on public television, he made a veritable declaration of independence from the United States, bringing Germany closer to France’s position on European sovereignty. “I have no illusions about what is happening in America,” he said, before citing the support of the Trumpist tycoon Elon Musk for the AfD in the German election campaign. “The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow,” he said. “We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.”

In Germany, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats — the two hegemonic parties since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949 — have governed together for three periods: from 1966 to 1969, from 2005 to 2009, and from 2013 to 2021. A debate on terminology will begin in the coming days. Until now, this alliance was called a grand coalition, since it included the two parties with the most votes; now, with the SPD’s collapse to third place, it is in any case a small grand coalition or a simple coalition.

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