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🇩🇪 Germany /Elections & Politics

News: Friedrich Merz, Vladimir Putin’s Supporters in Germany, and a Possible PISA Shock

From Der Spiegel · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Chancellor Friedrich Merz faces mounting pressure after the CDU suffered its heaviest election defeat in decades in Saxony-Anhalt, with the consequences for his coalition still unclear.
  • The AfD won nearly 44% of the vote and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance took 5.3%, giving parties described as friendly toward Vladimir Putin an absolute parliamentary majority.
  • The OECD is due to publish new PISA results, raising the prospect of another debate over Germany’s education performance.

Friedrich Merz is under growing pressure after the CDU’s crushing defeat in Saxony-Anhalt. The chancellor acknowledged the party’s “heaviest election defeat” in decades and said the government could not simply “return to business as usual.” What that means for his strategy, however, remains unclear.

heaviest election defeat

· Friedrich MerzThe German chancellor described the CDU’s result in Saxony-Anhalt.

The result follows another setback in Baden-Württemberg in March, where the CDU lost a state election in a region it had governed for decades. Merz then rejected any fundamental change of course and called for the federal government’s reform program to continue. Weeks later, he added that he might need to explain his policies better.

return to business as usual

· Friedrich MerzMerz said the government could not simply move on after the defeat.

Now, analysts see a government struggling to respond. Merz is confronting the crisis with “a mixture of measured self-criticism and demonstrative determination,” according to SPIEGEL colleague Philipp Wittrock. Yet the chancellor and his coalition increasingly appear at a loss. Merz originally became CDU leader promising to halve the AfD’s support. In Saxony-Anhalt, the party led by Alice Weidel, Tino Chrupalla and Katrin Siegmund won almost 44%, while national opinion polls also place the AfD in first place. Few people now believe Merz can reverse that trend after what the article describes as repeated political and communication mistakes.

a mixture of measured self-criticism and demonstrative determination

· Philipp WittrockThe SPIEGEL journalist’s assessment of Merz’s response to the crisis.

The election result also carries a direct foreign-policy tension. Last Tuesday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Germany was the “daily target of hybrid warfare” by Russia, marking the first time the federal government had identified Vladimir Putin’s Russia so clearly as an enemy. Following a drone incident at Leipzig airport, Germany closed the Russian Consulate General in Düsseldorf and the Russian House in Berlin. Days later, the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, both described as supporters of Russia to varying degrees, together won an absolute majority in the state parliament. CDU editor-in-chief Dirk Kurbjuweit wrote that Merz was “obviously the wrong man for this office in these times.”

obviously the wrong man for this office in these times

· Dirk KurbjuweitThe SPIEGEL editor-in-chief’s assessment of Merz after the Saxony-Anhalt election.
About this summary

Originally published by Der Spiegel in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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