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Politico (16 December 2024)

By James Angelos

Friedrich Merz took another step toward becoming German chancellor on Monday — while launching some scathing attacks on the very people with whom he will likely have to govern.

As the conservative leader lined up with most of Germany’s lawmakers in a vote of no confidence in the country’s beleaguered current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Merz accused the heads of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens of having humiliated the country and caused its economic decline. 

The heated and largely inward-looking parliamentary debate preceding the vote — the SPD and the Greens are in government now and could be future coalition partners for Merz as well — suggested the next coalition may be as contentious and ideologically incompatible as the one that just fell.

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