Monday briefing: Merz will be Germany’s chancellor – but extremists are waiting in the wings

Good morning. Germany’s elections always matter far beyond the country’s borders – but yesterday’s vote

could be the most important in a generation

.

After decades as the stable linchpin of European liberal democracy, Germany has found itself sucked into the same crises that are erupting all over the continent – over its economy, attitudes to immigration and the war in Ukraine. And after the shocking interventions of JD Vance and Elon Musk in favour of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, the election became a symbol of a wider struggle for ideological supremacy – and posed a serious question over whether the centre can hold across the continent.

Now we have

the beginnings of an answer

– one which indicates a politically divided country. The CDU/CSU won the election with about 29% of the vote, sweeping the beleaguered coalition led by the left-of-centre Social Democrats out of power. But as polls had suggested, the AfD doubled their support from the last election to about 21%.

That means that the CDU/CSU’s chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz will be tasked with forming a ruling coalition. The AfD will not be involved – but they will be waiting in the wings. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to

Deborah Cole

, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, about what we know so far, and what’s yet to emerge. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Ukraine

   | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is not willing to cave in to intense pressure from the Trump administration to sign a $500bn minerals deal – adding that that

   he was ready to quit as president

   if it meant “peace for Ukraine” or membership of Nato.

2. Catholicism

   | Pope Francis, who is battling pneumonia and a complex lung infection,

   remains in a critical condition

   , the Vatican has said. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, a senior Vatican official, told participants at a mass in St Peter’s Basilica on Sunday morning they should make their prayers for Francis “stronger and more intense”.

3. Afghanistan

   | The Taliban

   have arrested a British couple in their 70s

   for “teaching mothers parenting with children”. Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife, Barbie, 75, have been running projects in schools in Afghanistan for 18 years.

4. Farming

   | Hospitals, schools and prisons are to be urged to buy more British food, as part of a government push

   to heal a rift with farmers over changes to inheritance tax

   . The environment secretary, Steve Reed, will set a target of sourcing at least half of public sector food from farms with the highest welfare standards, which should benefit British producers.

5. Green economy

   | The net zero sector is growing

   three times faster than the overall UK economy

   , analysis has found, providing high-wage jobs across the country while cutting climate-heating emissions and increasing energy security. 22,000 net zero businesses generated £83bn in gross value added last year.

In depth: Merz wins in a fractured nation

This election was called after the collapse of the unpopular three-way coalition between the Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens. Outgoing SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz precipitated the vote after he

unexpectedly fired his finance minister

, the FDP’s Christian Lindner in November, prompting the pro-business party to withdraw from the government.

That was the denouement of months of infighting over how to deal with Germany’s budget deficit, and in particular Scholz’s determination to remove the “debt brake” – a constitutional rule that limits the government’s ability to fund investment through borrowing. But immigration has also been a central theme, with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of Angela Merkel and the mainstream right, taking a harder line as the far-right AfD capitalised on a series of terror attacks by foreign nationals. Jon Henley has

a more detailed explainer here

.

The Trump administration’s enthusiasm for the AfD and assertion that they must be included in coalition negotiations if they did well drew an outraged response from many mainstream politicians and prompted protests in Berlin. But while they may have played some part in driving historically high turnout, those interventions do not appear to have had a decisive impact in either direction.

Ahead of expected coalition talks with the SPD, Merz told supporters last night: “The world out there is not waiting for us and for lengthy negotiations.” But the talks could take months.

“Germany hasn’t really had a functioning majority government since November,” Deborah said. “The head-spinning developments of the last few months have only increased the stakes. Germany has been completely preoccupied with itself. Europe needs leadership, and Nato needs a clear line from Berlin.”

***

What do we know so far?

With all constituencies declared, the CDU/CSU had 28.5%, the AfD 21%, and the SPD 16%, their worst result since the 19th century. “It was a historic loss for the SPD,” Deborah said. “They are in the wilderness. The situation has reminded a lot of people here of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris - there was a much more popular and viable candidate in [defence minister]

Boris Pistorius

waiting to jump in - but Scholz insisted he was the only man who could lead the party, and they paid a bitter price.”

The Greens took 12%, and Die Linke (The Left, a populist party with roots in the old East Germany’s Communist party) were on 9% – an unexpectedly good result for them and perhaps the biggest surprise of the night. Deborah had

an excellent piece

on why they might do well last Tuesday. “They were able to mobilise a lot of young voters angry over Merz’s flirtation with the AfD,” she said. “He will have to contend with the fact that their clear-eyed condemnation of him brought them success.”

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), another left-leaning populist party, fell just short of the 5% threshold to take parliamentary seats. So did the FDP, who got 4.3%. Turnout was remarkably high, at 83.5% – the highest since reunification in 1990.

All of that means that Merz is overwhelmingly likely to be chancellor. But he will be leading a fractured country: one measure of that fact is that he won with the second-lowest vote share for the CDU/CSU in their history. A full results breakdown

is available here

.

***

What might a coalition look like?

The failure of the BSW and FDP to hit 5% is crucial, because it simplifies the parliamentary arithmetic for Merz: he can govern with only the SPD as junior partners, whereas if either party had reached the threshold, he would have had to draft the Greens to join as well.

“This was the question for everyone in Germany who cares about politics,” Deborah said. “No matter who it is you’re dealing with, three coalition members is by definition harder than two. It’s just a lot more unwieldy. Everyone who is worried about the AfD was biting their nails to see whether these smaller parties got in.”

So serious is the AfD’s threat, she added, that even some of those on the left who reject Merz’s agenda might have been hoping that he would be able to govern without the Greens. As well as the greater instability of such a coalition, that is also because of the AfD’s success in painting the Greens as villains.

***

What do these results mean for the AfD?

The AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel (pictured above) said last night that “our hand is outstretched”, but nobody expects that Merz will take it. As well as all the other mainstream parties, the CDU/CSU have ruled out working with them in coalition under any circumstances.

Nonetheless, they will be the largest opposition party and a significant voice over the next few years. Many fear that that could provide an ideal platform for them to broaden the appeal of their message.

The result is likely to help the AfD make the argument that the “firewall” against working with them is an anachronism. “It’s one thing if a party has 10%,” Deborah said. “If it has 20%, and one in five voters are in essence excluded from the democratic process, then there is a real problem for the mainstream. What began as a protest vote has morphed into a real relationship with the party among some supporters.”

That shift is causing many young Berliners to feel despair, Ashifa Kassam reports

in this piece

. But as she also notes, the AfD did well among 25-34s, getting 22% of the vote, more than any other party, against only 10% in its traditional base of 70+ voters.

***

What kind of a chancellor will

Merz be?

“He is no Angela Merkel,” Deborah said. “She had the grudging respect of a lot of people in the SPD and Greens. Merz is more hot-tempered, more right-wing. For so long German politics was synonymous with Merkel, and then you had the somewhat soporific moderate Olaf Scholz - Merz is a much more divisive figure.”

Merz has insisted that the debt brake must remain in place. He is also likely to seek stringent policies on immigration. In

this piece

for the Observer, Musa Okwonga argues that “the far right’s xenophobia is is not at the fringes of German society: it can be found in voices at its very centre. The loudest such voice is Merz.”

Merz’s view – strongly contested by Merkel, an old political foe, among others – is that the only way to fend off the AfD is to take a hard line on the subject. One indication of how far he is willing to go came in his attempt last month to force through an “influx limitation law” – an effort he knew could only pass with the support of the AfD. The bill failed, but it was widely viewed as a spiritual break of the “firewall” keeping the AfD out of power, if not a technical one.

But there will be hopes in Brussels that he can take the strong leadership role in the EU that Germany has traditionally occupied, as Jennifer Rankin

writes here

. And in Kyiv, his victory is likely to be welcomed. Merz has strongly rejected the Trump administration’s attempted interventions in German politics and described an “epochal rupture” with the United States; and he has promised that under his leadership Germany will take a more prominent leadership role in Europe’s support for Ukraine.

Kate Connolly’s analysis piece

sets out the key items in his in-tray – and notes that calibrating Berlin’s relationship with the White House will probably dominate at first. Merz gave an early indication of how difficult that may be last night: Trump, he said, had made it “clear that [his] government is fairly indifferent to Europe’s fate”.

What else we’ve been reading

• Simon Hattenstone’s

  interview for Saturday magazine

  with

  Esther Ghey

  (above), whose daughter Brianna was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds, is an overwhelmingly powerful account of a woman whose reservoirs of compassion are scarcely believable – and who is animated by her belief that her daughter’s life should count for something.

  Archie

• When I first watched

  Severance

  three years ago, I became completely obsessed. The wait for the second season was excruciating, and now that it’s here, even the week-long gaps between episodes feel too long. To get your fix a little early, read

  Emine Saner’s interview with Patricia Arquette

  , where she discusses the unsettling parallels she is now seeing between the series and the real world.

  Nimo

• Even now,

  writes Nesrine Malik

  , the idea still goes around that we should take

  Donald Trump

  “seriously, but not literally”. But the truth is that a clear Trump doctrine is emerging – transactional, ahistorical, and contemptuous of any theory of soft power.

  Archie

• Buying new furniture is either very expensive or so cheap that it’s likely to fall apart before your tenancy ends. A growing number of people are ditching online shopping and searching in unexpected places for

  second-hand pieces

  to restore.

  Emma Russell spoke with “furniture flippers”

  who are transforming dilapidated old finds into something beautiful.

  Nimo

• Eva Wiseman catches

  the bleak power of relentless smartphone

  news alerts

  exactly: “Sharp pinches, reminding us we can never relax, the alerts keeping us alert, keeping us vibrating on this frequency of

  oh no oh no”.

  Archie

Sport

Premier League

| Liverpool extended their lead at the top of the table to 11 points with

a statement 2-0 win at Manchester City

thanks to goals from Mohamed Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai. Earlier on Sunday, Newcastle beat Nottingham Forest 4-3 in a thriller.

Rugby

|

France thrashed Italy 73-24

in their Six Nations match thanks to eleven tries and a powerful performance from Antoine Dupont. The reuslt keeps them in with a chance of winning the title.

Cricket

| Virat Kohli’s record-extending 51st one-day century

secured a six-wicket win over Pakistan

in Dubai that puts India on the verge of qualifying for the Champions Trophy semi-finals.

The front pages

“Conservatives set to lead German coalition as far-right party surges,” is the lead story on the

Guardian

today, while the

Times

has “Hard right on course for big gains in Germany,” and the

FT

goes with “Merz poised to become next German chancellor as AfD attracts record vote.”

The

Telegraph

highlights the latest developments in Ukraine with: “Zelensky: I will quit if it brings peace”. The

Metro

follows suit with “Zelensky: I’d quit for peace.”

Over at the

i

, the focus is on “Labour’s plan for 1.5m new homes under threat from skills shortage,” and the

Express

: “WASPI women threaten legal action in payouts row.” Finally the

Sun

runs with an investigation: “Fat jabs linked to 82 deaths.”

Today in Focus

The murder and legacy of the world’s first openly gay imam

Imam Muhsin Hendricks of Cape Town, South Africa, was the world’s first openly gay imam. In early February,

he was shot and killed

and the identities and motives of those responsible are still unknown.

Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Born during her parents’ sea voyage,

Laura Dekker always dreamed of sailing

the world. At age eight, she began saving and training for the trip, and, at 13, crossed the Channel solo. When she announced plans for a global voyage, social services tried to stop her, sparking a legal battle. After eight court cases, she set sail in 2010 at age 14 on her 38ft sailboat, Guppy, facing storms, isolation and sleepless nights. But the journey also brought incredible moments – meeting people from around the world and experiencing the breath-taking beauty of places like French Polynesia. Over 518 days, she made more than 20 stops, worked odd jobs and learned invaluable life lessons. In 2012, at 16, she became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe alone. Now, she runs a sailing foundation in New Zealand, helping teenagers develop resilience and teamwork.

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

• Quick crossword

• Cryptic crossword

• Wordiply