Germany’s Friedrich Merz has pledged to achieve “independence” from the United States after his centre-right alliance won parliamentary elections held amid doubts about US President Donald Trump’s commitment to Europe’s security.
Merz, who faces tricky negotiations with his Christian Democratic Union’s historic rival to form a coalition government after ruling out cooperation with the second-placed hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), said on Sunday that it would be his “absolute priority” to strengthen Europe so it does not have to rely on Washington for its defence.
“I never thought I would have to say something like that on a TV programme but after Donald Trump’s latest comments in the last week, it is clear that the Americans, or at least this portion of the Americans, this government, care very little about the fate of Europe,” the chancellor-in-waiting told a televised roundtable of political leaders.
Merz said he was not sure that NATO would exist in its “current form” by the time of the next meeting of the transatlantic military alliance in June, “or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.
“That is my absolute priority, I have no illusions at all about what will come out of America,” Merz said.
Merz also took aim at tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s cost-cutting tsar and close ally, for intervening in the election campaign to support the AfD, which secured its best-ever result in a national poll.
“The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and impertinent than the interventions we have seen from Moscow, so we are under massive pressure from two sides,” Merz said.
Merz’s Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) alliance won 208 seats with 28.6 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, preliminary results showed, followed by the AfD with 152 seats and 20.8 percent of the vote – a doubling of its result at the last election.
Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), which had governed in a widely unpopular three-party coalition, took 120 seats, its worst result since the end of World World Two.
The Greens won 85 seats, followed by the democratic socialist Die Linke with 64 seats and left-wing populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) with one seat.
The pro-business Free Democratic Party, a member of the outgoing coalition that has traditionally alternated between partnering with the CDU-CSU alliance and the SDP, failed to win a seat after falling short of the 5 percent threshold to enter the 630-member Bundestag.
The election result in Germany, the European Union’s most populous country and its biggest economy, comes as the Trump administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine with Russia have prompted concerns that Washington is moving closer to Moscow at the expense of the transatlantic alliance.
Trump earlier on Sunday welcomed the election outcome as a “great day” for Germany and the US, and said it was proof that the German public “got tired of the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration, that has prevailed for so many years”.
Merz, a longtime supporter of transatlantic ties, campaigned on a conservative platform promising to curb unauthorised migration and slash taxes and red tape amid widespread discontent with immigration and the economy.
Merz, a longtime rival of former Chancellor Angela Merkel who has led the CDU in a more conservative and pro-business direction, will need the help of the SDP to form a governing majority in Bundestag.
“If we have one partner, it will be easier; if we need two partners, it will be harder, but even in that case, it will have to be successful,” Merz said.
“The main thing is to create a government in Germany that is capable of acting as quickly as possible, with a good parliamentary majority. Because, dear friends, the world out there is not waiting for us and it is not waiting for lengthy coalition talks and negotiations.”
In a speech hailing her party’s “magnificent campaign”, AfD leader Alice Weidel, who has been excluded from consideration by the mainstream parties as part of a “firewall” against the resurgence of far-right politics, suggested it would only be a matter of time before her party holds power.
“Our hand remains outstretched to form a government,” she told supporters, adding that it would be tantamount to “electoral fraud” if the first-placed conservatives chose to govern with left-wing parties rather than them.
If that happened, Weidel said, “next time, we’ll come first”.
