[Germany’s European allies have been in suspense, waiting for the Continent’s most important election this year. President François Hollande of France indicated how eager, even impatient, they are when he congratulated Ms. Merkel from Paris and invited her to visit as soon as possible. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who hopes Ms. Merkel will support his quest to claw back rights from Europe’s regulators in Brussels, posted his congratulations on Twitter, adding, “I’m looking forward to continuing to work closely with her.”]
By Alison Smale and Jack Ewing
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela
Merkel took steps on Monday to form a new government, a day after she scored a
stunning personal triumph in German national elections that cemented her
position as the most powerful politician in Europe.
Ms. Merkel became the only major European leader to be re-elected twice since the financial crisis of 2008, winning a strong popular endorsement for her mix of austerity and solidarity in managing the troubled euro zone.
On
Monday morning, Ms. Merkel met with leaders of her center-right Christian
Democratic party to discuss strategy for forming a coalition government, most
likely with the center-left Social Democrats, who finished second in the
polling. The negotiations are likely to take weeks or months, extending a de
facto moratorium on European decision-making that has been in effect during the
German election campaign.
Ms.
Merkel said Monday that she did not expect German policy toward the euro zone
to change, a statement that is likely to come as a disappointment to other
European leaders who hoped she would be open to bolder action once the election
was behind her.
European
policy “will continue in the same spirit as before,” Ms. Merkel said. Her
party’s victory “was a very strong vote for a unified Europe,” she said.
The
surprising show of strength for Ms. Merkel and the Christian Democrats — even
their own polls had not suggested such a result — was just short of an absolute
majority, according to preliminary results published on Monday. No chancellor
has achieved an absolute majority since Konrad Adenauer in 1957.
Ms.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their allies, the Christian Social Union in
Bavaria, together won 41.5 percent of the popular vote, which translates into
311 of the 630 seats in Parliament. In 2009, the two parties together won 33.8
percent of the vote.
For
all her success, it is not clear how Ms. Merkel will govern in her third
four-year term. Leaders of the Social Democrats, or S.P.D., said they were open
to coalition talks but showed little enthusiasm. The two parties shared power
during Ms. Merkel’s first term, but she dominated the coalition and left the
Social Democrats weaker.
“Ms.
Merkel won with an impressive result,” Peer Steinbrück, the Social Democrats’
lead candidate, said Monday. “Now it is up to her to find a majority. The
S.P.D. is not going to force itself upon her.”
Ms.
Merkel’s allies for the past four years, the business-minded Free Democrats,
lost their place in Parliament, missing the 5 percent cutoff for the first time
since the party’s founding after World War II.
The
humiliating defeat of the Free Democrats was symptomatic of simmering
discontent at the fringes of German politics. A larger majority of voters chose
the consensus and stability offered by the two main parties, both of which
gained votes compared with the last elections. But a significant minority moved
to extremes.
The
right-wing Alternative for Germany, which wants to abolish the euro, fell just
short of the 5 percent parliamentary threshold, draining votes from the Free
Democrats and probably causing that party’s defeat. The Alternative party could
be an annoyance to Ms. Merkel in the next four years and force her to pay more
attention to the political right.
Some
former Free Democrat voters said they had defected out of disappointment that
the party had not come out more strongly against euro rescue plans. “I voted
for the F.D.P. for 40 years,” said Anneli Ute Gabanyi, a political scientist
who lives in Berlin and was attending the Alternative for Germany gathering
Sunday night. “I finally said no.”
In
the past three years, the Social Democrats have given crucial support to Ms.
Merkel in Parliament in passing credit lines and aid packages, tied to painful
reforms, for euro-zone countries in need. But the center-leftists are likely to
extract a high price in domestic reforms — a minimum wage, or social change —
in exchange for joining a Merkel government in which they would be clearly the
junior partner. Preliminary official results showed them with 25.7 percent, far
below their center-right rivals.
Sigmar
Gabriel, the chairman of the Social Democrats, said Ms. Merkel called him early
Monday, but he indicated that he was in no rush to begin coalition talks.
Instead, the party will hold a conference at the end of the week to discuss
with its membership how to proceed.
The
Social Democrats find themselves in a tough position, given their last experience
in a coalition with the chancellor from 2005 to 2009. The party lost popularity
afterward, and recovered only slightly in this round of voting. But in recent
years they have gathered strength at the state level. The Social Democrats
control 9 of the legislatures in Germany’s 16 states, which gives them a
majority in the upper house of Parliament. They must proceed with caution to
avoid jeopardizing their growing strength beyond Berlin.
Mr.
Steinbrück led the Social Democrats’ election campaign on a platform of social
justice. On Monday, he and Mr. Gabriel indicated that it would serve as a loose
basis for negotiations. The platform calls for introduction of a minimum wage,
an overhaul of the pension system and the establishment of a fund to save troubled
banks that would be financed by the institutions themselves, instead of by
taxpayers.
Mr.
Steinbrück said points of contention with Ms. Merkel could include creation of
a banking union, further financial aid for Greece and the troubled-bank fund.
Ms.
Merkel, a physicist raised in Communist East Germany, was unusually buoyant
Sunday when she appeared before supporters, who chanted “Angie! Angie!” and
gave her two minutes of applause at party headquarters. She exuberantly thanked
voters, campaigners and her husband, Joachim Sauer, a quantum chemist. Mr.
Sauer, who tends to shun the limelight, stood at the side of the stage,
acknowledging the jubilation.
Later,
during a celebration at her party headquarters, Ms. Merkel, 59, clapped and
sang along with the crowds but reminded them, “Tomorrow, we work.”
Ms.
Merkel entered politics after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. She is now widely
viewed as the world’s most powerful woman, and is set to overtake Margaret
Thatcher as Europe’s longest-serving elected female leader.
Her
critics have accused her of lacking strategic vision and say she has relied on
tactical skills to survive. They ask why she has not used her power to write
more history, both at home and in the unified Europe that is the source of
Germany’s political and economic strength.
“She
has a technocratic understanding of Europe,” said Joschka Fischer, the former
Greens leader and foreign minister from 1998 to 2005. But, he added, “Europe is
not a scientific project.”
The
euro crisis, in this view, is about politics and sovereignty, and how much of
the latter the 17 countries that use the euro, and the 11 others in the
European Union, are prepared to abandon to make a success of their project.
Mr.
Fischer sees Germany, and Europe, as stuck midway while crossing a river,
unable to return to the riverbank they have left, but unable to get to the
other side with Ms. Merkel as navigator.
Other
analysts suggested that neither the chancellor nor most Germans, who are
conservative by nature and relish their position as the economic powerhouse of
Europe, were prepared to shoulder such leadership.
The
election outcome Sunday “is the safest course for a country like Germany,”
Annette Heuser, the executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, said in a
telephone interview from Washington. The mentality, she said, is “Why rock the
boat?”
Yet
the elections also hinted at more volatility in German politics, with the
Greens, for example, tumbling from 20 percent-plus showings two years ago to
around 8 percent on Sunday.
Germany’s
European allies have been in suspense, waiting for the Continent’s most
important election this year. President François Hollande of France indicated
how eager, even impatient, they are when he congratulated Ms. Merkel from Paris
and invited her to visit as soon as possible. Prime Minister David Cameron of
Britain, who hopes Ms. Merkel will support his quest to claw back rights from
Europe’s regulators in Brussels, posted his congratulations on Twitter, adding,
“I’m looking forward to continuing to work closely with her.”
The
next most pressing change on the European agenda is probably a banking union,
on which Germany has not pushed hard. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who
with Ms. Merkel has guided his country through the euro crisis, went on
television Sunday night to assure European partners that Germany would continue
to play its reliable part in the Continent’s affairs, but mentioned no
specifics.
Jan
Techau, director of Carnegie Europe in Brussels, was in Germany for the
election and said the vote on Sunday meant that it would be winter before
Europe resumed any overhauls.
While
the chancellor has talked often of “more Europe,” lately she has shown little
appetite for political restructuring that would require complex changes to the
treaties that govern the European Union, Mr. Techau noted.
Her
major goal is “to get out of this crisis in one piece,” he said. “This muddling
through can continue for a while.”
Melissa Eddy contributed
reporting.
