Germany’s Christian Democrats came out of yesterday’s election with the most seats in Parliament which sets up Friedrich Merz to be the country’s next Chancellor. Merz has been positioning himself as more conservative than outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz but much less so than President Trump.
Merz, an old-school conservative who has never held a government role previously, is set to lead Europe’s biggest economy and most populous state, after his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party won 28.6% of the vote, according to preliminary official results.
“Let’s get the party started,” Merz, 69, told supporters as he declared victory at the CDU’s party headquarters in central Berlin, an apparent nod to wanting to get coalition negotiations underway quickly as the region grapples with US President Donald Trump’s upending of…
