No. of Recommendations: 2
So Friedrich Merz went up for election to Chancellor in the Bundestag today. Merz, we recall, campaigned on getting tough on immigration among other things...and then basically reneged on a lot of it 24 hours after winning the election.
No German Chancellor since WWII has ever lost the vote in the Bundestag...until today. Merz fell 6 votes short on his first ballot.
Merz had said he had planned on spending a lot more on the military, on cementing the Greens' plans for de-industrializing Germany (those two things are in direct conflict) and other reforms...but that looks to be in serious jeopardy:
sfgate.com - Chancellor candidate merz stumble casts shadowFRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Friedrich Merz's unprecedented failure to win election as German chancellor in the first round of voting in parliament — though he won in the second — raised doubts about his new government's ability to carry through on plans to push Europe's largest economy out of stagnation.Evidently he had to reach out to the radical communists to get himself over the top.
“The failed vote, and fact that it came out of the blue, have already weakened Merz significantly," said Franziska Palmas, senior Europe economist at Capital Economics.
“His promise to run a much more efficient and conflict-free government ... looks much less credible now. And delivering on his economic proposals, including a big increase in defense and infrastructure spending, corporate tax cuts, bureaucracy cuts and digitalization, will be more difficult than expected,” Palmas added. 