Merkel stays as far right advances in Germany

With Angela Merkel’s conservative party winning the most votes in the federal parliamentary election on Sunday, she soon will start tough negotiations to form a coalition government.

Merkel retains her fourth term as German chancellor as a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany or AfD, has won seats in parliament for the first time in decades with a projected third-place finish.

Final official election outcomes had not been confirmed by press time, but exit polls indicated that Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian counterpart Christian Social Union won 33 percent of votes, down from 41 percent in 2013 election. That is a 70-year low. The AfD won 12.6 percent.

Rolf Langhammer, vicepresident of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany from 1997-2012, said a likely coalition of Christian Democrats, the liberal Free Democratic Party and Greens could mean relations between Germany and China would be relieved from unilateral actions against Chinese investment in Germany. He said that the liberals in principle support the private sector’s view that such actions are not in Germany’s interests.

On Sunday night, Merkel said her party accepted the result, pledging to win back voters from the nationalist AfD party.

“Of course we had hoped for a slightly better result. But we must not forget that we have just completed an extraordinarily challenging legislative period, so I am happy that we reached the strategic goals of our election campaign,” she said.

Sunday’s election has enabled far-right parties to expand their influence in Europe after the European Parliament election in 2014 and recent elections in the Netherlands, Britain and France.

Gabi Zimmer, president of the European United Left and Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament, said the Sunday Bundestag election shows how deep economic and social divisions are in Germany.

“After the election of Emmanuel Macron as president of France, many already cheered that the advance of right-wing extremists in the EU was stopped, and the crisis over,” said Zimmer in a statement.

“They were proven wrong today. The German election is a last warning call for the urgently needed 180-degree social turn in Germany and the EU.”