BERLIN: Friedrich Merz, set to become Germany’s next chancellor after his opposition conservatives won the national election on Sunday (Feb 23), vowed to help give Europe “real independence” from the US as he prepared to cobble together a government.
Merz, 69, faces complex and lengthy coalition negotiations after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged to a historic second place in a fractured vote after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unloved three-way alliance.
Mainstream parties rule out working with the AfD which enjoyed the endorsement of prominent US figures including Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and ally of President Donald Trump.
Merz, who has no previous experience in office, is set to become chancellor with Europe’s largest economy ailing, its society split over migration and its security caught between a confrontational US and an assertive Russia and China.
Merz took aim at the US in blunt remarks after his victory, criticising the “ultimately outrageous” comments flowing from Washington during the campaign, comparing them to hostile interventions from Russia.
“So we are under such massive pressure from two sides that my absolute priority now is to achieve unity in Europe. It is possible to create unity in Europe,” he told a roundtable with other leaders.
Merz’s broadside against the US came despite President Donald Trump welcoming the election outcome.
“Much like the USA, the people of Germany got tired of the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration, that has prevailed for so many years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Hitherto seen as an atlanticist, Merz said Trump had shown his administration to be “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”.
Merz’s “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can achieve real independence from the USA step by step,” he added.
He even ventured to ask whether the next summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which has underpinned Europe’s security for decades, would still see “NATO in its current form”.
