Upheaval: Merck not elected Chancellor

AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS

Friedrich Merck failed to win the parliamentary majority needed to be appointed German Chancellor.

It is a sudden and unexpected defeat for his new coalition with the Social Democrats.

The lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, now has 14 days to elect Merck or another candidate for Chancellor with an absolute majority, Reuters reports, Jutarnji reports.

This is the first time in history that a chancellor candidate has not received the required majority in the Bundestag.

He needed 316 votes to be elected, but the result was 310 for, 307 against, and three abstentions.

The CDU/CSU (208) and SPD (120) together have 328 seats, which means that 18 members of the coalition did not support Merck.

Merck must now cancel all trips he planned after being elected Chancellor. On Wednesday, he had planned to fly to Paris, and then to Warsaw.

Bild reports that according to unofficial information from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, there will be no second round of voting in the Bundestag today.

This means that Merck will definitely not become German Chancellor today.

The media reports that Merck was shocked when he realized that he did not have the required number of votes.