Germany’s Merz calls for ‘independence’ from US as conservatives win vote

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.

After excluding the second-placed hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Merz, who is in complex negotiations with his party’s traditional centre-left rival, announced on Sunday that strengthening Europe would be his “absolute priority” and that Washington should not be a ally for its defense.

“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 expressed concern that NATO would no longer exist in its “current form” by the transatlantic military alliance’s upcoming meeting in June, or that we would need to establish an independent European defense capability much sooner.

“That is my absolute priority, I have no illusions at all about what will come out of America”, Merz said.

Elon Musk, Trump’s close ally and cost-cutting tsar, was also attacked by Merz, a tech billionaire, for intervening in the AfD’s campaign, which had the best-ever outcome in a national poll.

We are under intense pressure from both sides because the Washington interventions were no less dramatic and impertinent than those conducted in Moscow, 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 coalition that has traditionally relied on the CDU-CSU alliance and the SDP, failed to win a seat after exceeding the 5% threshold to join the 630-member Bundestag.

The Trump administration’s efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine with Russia have sparked concerns that Washington is moving closer to Moscow at the expense of the transatlantic alliance as a result of the election results in Germany, the country with the most populous population and the biggest economy.

Trump praised the election results as a “great day” for Germany and the US earlier on Sunday, saying it demonstrated that the German public had grown tired of the country’s “no common sense agenda, especially on immigration and energy,” which has persisted for so long.

In response to widespread unpopularity with immigration and the economy, Merz campaigned on a conservative platform promising to stop illegal immigration and cut taxes and red tape.

Merz will need the SDP’s assistance to form a governing majority in the Bundestag, which has long been a challenge to former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s more conservative and pro-business agenda.

“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 goal is to establish a German government with a strong parliamentary majority that can act as quickly as possible.” Because, dear friends, the world out there is not waiting for us and it is not waiting for lengthy coalition talks and negotiations”.

AfD leader Alice Weidel, who has been turned down by the mainstream parties as part of a “firewall” against the resurgence of far-right politics, said it would only be a matter of time before her party would take office in a speech humbling her party’s “magnificent campaign.”

“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.

Source: Aljazeera