The German centre-right CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD) struck a deal on Wednesday, April 9th, to form a government. The details of the agreement will be announced by the party leaders later today.
Once the agreement is presented, the new parliament is expected to install Friedrich Merz as chancellor in late April or early May.
According to media reports, the SPD will take control of three key ministries: finance, defence, and justice. The CDU/CSU, on the other hand, will get the interior ministry and the foreign office.
The deal comes after six weeks of negotiations.
The CDU/CSU alliance won the elections on February 23rd, promising to be tough on migration, spending less money on climate policies, and pursuing fiscal conservatism.
However, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has backtracked on most of his promises, even before forming a government.
In order to appease his left-wing coalition partner, he has gone back on his vow to turn back illegal migrants at the border. He has also agreed to take on a huge €1 trillion debt to boost spending on defence and infrastructure, despite promising not to do so during the campaign.
He has even accommodated the now-opposition Greens party by agreeing to channel €100 billion into Germany’s existing climate fund and to enshrine in the constitution 2045 as a compulsory climate neutrality deadline.
Instead of taking the CDU back to its conservative roots and reversing former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel’s left-wing, pro-migration and pro-climate policies, Friedrich Merz has embarked on the same journey as his predecessor: building a coalition with the progressive socialists in order to seize power.
The betrayal of the party’s voters has resulted in a slump for the CDU/CSU alliance in the polls: the party reached 28.5% of the votes in the elections—the second-worst result in its history—but is now polling at 24%.
The right-wing, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) now leads the polls with 25%. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel reacted by saying that Germans “want political change—and not a “business as usual” coalition consisting of the CDU/CSU and SPD!”
According to Hermann Binkert, the leader of the polling institute Insa, a winning party has never experienced such a loss of trust between the day of the election and the formation of the government.
A recent survey shows 60% of Germans don’t think Merz is fit to be chancellor. At the end of March, ‘only’ 47% rejected him for the role.
Many of the CDU’s local politicians have quit the party in response to Merz’s actions. The local CDU association in the eastern Potsdam-Mittelmark district even suggested that the party leadership should hold a ballot where the members of the party can decide whether to support the coalition deal with the Social Democrats.
Another local CDU association in the eastern district of Harz said the party should tear down the so-called ‘firewall,’ the Brandmauer, the principle of non-cooperation with the AfD. The CDU leadership refuses to have anything to do with the AfD, a party it would have much more in common with than SPD, and instead relies on cooperation with left-wing parties to gain a majority in parliament.
