Merkel elected to 4th term as chancellor

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel, bruised by half a year of postelection coalition haggling, was on Wednesday elected by parliament to her fourth and likely final term at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy.

Lawmakers in Berlin’s glass-domed Reichstag voted 364-315 with nine abstentions for Merkel who was later formally appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Merkel, wearing a white blazer, said “I accept the vote” and beamed happily as applause filled the Bundestag chamber, where her husband Joachim Sauer and her 89-year-old mother were among the well-wishers.

For the veteran leader, the ceremony marked the end of a painful stretch of postelection paralysis, the deepest crisis of her 12-year career.

A right-wing populist rise in September elections weakened all mainstream parties and deprived Merkel of a majority, forcing her into another unhappy alliance with the center-left Social Democratic Party, or SPD.

The grand coalition, mockingly dubbed a “GroKo” in German, didn’t start as a “love marriage”, her designated vicechancellor and finance minister, the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, drily observed this week.

All coalition partners have nonetheless sought to allay fears that their marriage of convenience could break up midterm, insisting they plan to jointly govern until 2021.

On Friday Merkel will head to Paris to discuss EU reform plans with French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of a March 22-23 summit, after a six-month stretch in which Berlin was hamstrung on the European and world stage.

Macron warned in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily that, without Germany on board, “part of my project would be doomed to failure”.

Closer EU cooperation

Merkel’s incoming coalition has broadly welcomed Macron’s bold reform plans, meant to reinvigorate the bloc and counter extremists and populists who have made major gains in Europe.

She has argued that the EU must increasingly look after its own interests in the era of US President Donald Trump, who has questioned long-standing transatlantic defense ties and threatened a trade war.

Berlin advocates closer EU cooperation on defense, immigration and plans for a European Monetary Fund.

The rise of populist fringe parties is also the central domestic threat for Merkel’s new coalition, which will face the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, as the biggest opposition party.

The AfD scored almost 13 percent in the election, capitalizing on public fears over a mass influx of refugees and migrants since 2015.