Angela Merkel
Photographer: Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg
Photographer: Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner took a beating at the polls on Sunday, with Germany’s Social Democrats suffering a sharp drop in the vote for European Parliament and losing the race in the city-state of Bremen for the first time since World War II.
The poor showing by the SPD threatens to revive calls from the party’s restive base to bring down the government after reluctantly agreeing to enter a third alliance with Merkel 14 months ago. Support nearly halved to 15.5% in the European ballot, while in its traditional stronghold of Bremen, the party came in second to Merkel’s Christian Democrats, according to an initial count from public broadcaster ARD.
“The results as of now are extremely disappointing,” SPD leader Andrea Nahles told a silent crowd at party headquarters in Berlin, even as she urged the membership to hold the line until the end of the year. “The worst thing that could happen to us would be to break off this course at the halfway point.”
| European Parliament Vote | 2019 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|
| CDU/CSU | 28.8% | 35.3% |
| SPD | 15.5% | 27.3% |
| Greens | 20.6% | 10.7% |
| AfD | 10.8% | 7.1% |
Nahles said she plans to see through internal reforms to make the party fit for the next election in 2021, implying she remains committed to the so-called grand coalition with Merkel ahead of a mid-term review this fall.
Besides narrowly coming ahead in Bremen, Merkel’s CDU-led bloc has little to cheer about. Support in the European ballot fell by 6.5 percentage points and could drive a further wedge between Merkel and her chosen successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
“This election result is not a result fitting the ambitions that we’ve set for ourselves as a mass party,” Kramp-Karrenbauer, who succeeded Merkel as CDU leader in December, told party members in Berlin. The leadership will undertake a full analysis at a June 2 meeting, which
took Merkel by surprise when it was announced, according to people familiar with the situation.
Green Gain
The opposition Greens were the big winner from the political shift away from Germany’s traditionally strongest parties. Riding a wave of support from young voters, the party surged to leapfrog the SPD to become the country’s second-strongest political force, with its vote nearly doubling to 20.6%. The far-right Alternative for Germany gained to 10.8%.
The results — the worst for the governing parties in a European election — are the latest setback for Merkel’s coalition. A series of political roadblocks have gnawed at the chancellor’s authority in her fourth and final term and compromised Germany’s ability to push its interests on the international stage.
The SPD’s lead candidate in the European campaign, Katarina Barley, will leave her post as justice minister in Merkel’s cabinet to take her Parliament seat in Brussels. That’ll mean a cabinet reshuffle, though the ministry post will still go to the Social Democrats, which will choose her replacement.
(Adds SPD leader comments in third, CDU leader in sixth paragraphs.)
