{"id":21005,"date":"2025-04-15T04:12:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T04:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/21005\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T04:12:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T04:12:18","slug":"german-parliament-set-to-elect-merz-as-chancellor-on-6-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/21005\/","title":{"rendered":"German parliament set to elect Merz as chancellor on 6 May"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

Germany’s parliament plans to meet on 6 May to elect Friedrich Merz as the country’s next chancellor, if all parties in his proposed government approve a coalition agreement. <\/p>\n

Parliament\u2019s lower house, the Bundestag, said on Monday that Speaker Julia Kl\u00f6ckner is preparing to call the session early next month.<\/p>\n

\"Close<\/p>\n

Merz’s centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) last week reached an agreement to form a government more than six weeks after Germany’s snap federal election.<\/p>\n

The would-be coalition aims to spur economic growth, boost defence spending, take a tougher approach to migration and catch up on long-neglected modernisation.<\/p>\n

Combined, the three parties have a modest majority of 328 out of 630 seats in the Bundestag. Since no party wants to work with the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) \u2014 which finished second in the 23 February election \u2014 no other plausible combination of governing parties has a parliamentary majority.<\/p>\n

Both the CDU and the SPD \u2014 the party of the departing chancellor, Olaf Scholz \u2014 need to approve the coalition agreement before parliament can gather to elect Merz. The CSU approved it last week. <\/p>\n

The SPD is set to hold a member vote, whilst the CDU will vote during a party conference slated for 28 April. <\/p>\n

There is some resistance in the SPD’s ranks after the party finished third in February with its worst post-war result in a national parliamentary election. <\/p>\n

The party\u2019s youth branch, Jusos, has come out against the deal. The faction represents around one-fifth of the SPD’s approximately 358,000 members. <\/p>\n

One sticking point is Germany’s minimum wage, which the SPD campaigned to increase to \u20ac15 per hour by 2026. The current minimum wage is \u20ac12.82 per hour. <\/p>\n

Merz has said that an increase in the minimum wage was not guaranteed through the coalition agreement.<\/p>\n

Despite the dispute, SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil said on Sunday that the majority of the party’s members recognised the need to form a stable government. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are always alternatives. … One alternative is new elections, one alternative is perhaps a minority government,” Klingbeil told ARD television. <\/p>\n

But in today\u2019s troubled times, “Germany must be a place of stability,” he added. <\/p>\n

“For that, we need a stable democratic government, and we have presented a sensible coalition agreement for that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Germany’s parliament plans to meet on 6 May to elect Friedrich Merz as the country’s next chancellor,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[12269,1943,2000,299,1945,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-21005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-bundestag","9":"tag-christian-democrats","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114340032892805204","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}