Berlin:

Germany is set to hold the crucial federal election on Sunday (February 23) to elect its next chancellor. The snap polls were called by chancellor Olaf Scholz when his coalition government fell apart at the end of last year, the results of which will shape the future of Europe’s most influential nation and the European Union.

In the race for top leader is an incumbent chancellor seeking a second term, the opposition leader, the current vice chancellor and — for the first time — a popular leader of a far-right party. The elections are receiving an unusual level of interest from onlookers outside the country, including the world’s richest man Elon Musk, who caused an outcry in Germany by throwing his weight behind the far-right Alternative Alice Weidel.

A Look At Top Contenders 

Olaf Scholz: The 66-year-old centre-left Social Democrat has been Germany’s chancellor since December 2021. Seeking a second term, Scholz has a wealth of government experience, having previously served as Hamburg’s mayor and as German labour and finance minister. 

As chancellor, Scholz launched an effort to modernize Germany’s military after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and made Germany Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier. His government prevented an energy crunch and tried to counter high inflation. But his three-party coalition became notorious for infighting and collapsed in November as it argued over how to revitalize the economy — Europe’s biggest, which has shrunk for the past two years.

Friedrich Merz: Germany’s 69-year-old opposition leader has emerged as the front-runner in the election campaign, with his centre-right Union bloc leading polls. Merz became the leader of his Christian Democratic Union party after longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel — a former rival — stepped down in 2021. Since then, he has taken the party in a more conservative direction. 

During the election campaign, Merz has made curbing irregular migration a central issue. However, he lacks experience in government. He joined the European Parliament in 1989 before becoming a lawmaker in Germany five years later. He took a break from active politics for several years after 2009, practising as a lawyer and heading the supervisory board of investment manager BlackRock’s German branch.

Robert Habeck: The 55-year-old Habeck is the candidate of the environmentalist Greens. He’s also Germany’s current vice chancellor and the economy and climate minister, with responsibility for energy issues. As co-leader of the Greens from 2018 to 2022, he presided over a rise in the party’s popularity, but in 2021 he stepped aside to let Annalena Baerbock — now Germany’s foreign minister — make the party’s first run for the chancellor’s job. 

Habeck’s record as a minister has drawn mixed reviews, particularly a plan his ministry drew up to replace fossil-fuel heating systems with greener alternatives that deepened divisions in the government.

Alice Weidel: The 46-year-old Weidel is making the first bid of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, for the country’s top job. An economist by training, Weidel joined the party shortly after it was founded in 2013. She has been co-leader of her party’s parliamentary group since the party first won seats in the national legislature in 2017. 

Weidel has been a co-leader of the party itself since 2022, along with Tino Chrupalla. In December, she was nominated as the candidate for chancellor — though other parties say they won’t work with the AfD, so she has no realistic path to the top job at present.

When Will The Results Come?

It is likely to take several days after February 23 to confirm the final results of the election. However, based on the exit polls, fairly reliable results are likely to be out by Sunday evening, but there may still be some uncertainty as the counting of votes by post (a trend which is on the rise) takes time. The performance of smaller parties will also factor in result timing as Germany has a norm of electing a coalition government. 

Even after the full results are out, forming a new government will, most likely, take some time as talks between parties on coalition will start only after the results. The coalition might take several months to put a government together. It depends on the numbers at play and the political arithmetic – essentially the extent to which different combinations of parties agree or disagree on various policy positions.

Why Germany Forms Coalition Governments?

The proportional voting system and increased political fracturing in Germany make it extremely difficult for any one party to form a government alone and a coalition needs to be formed comprising parties that together hold more than 50 per cent of the seats in the Bundestag — the national parliament.

It is also partly political culture in Germany to prefer stable majorities as minority governments are considered to be too weak and unstable. 

Until the early 1980s, there were usually three parties (conservative, social democrats and liberals) in Parliament. However, currently, the country has seven parties in the Bundestag.

Parties In Fray 

Germany has two centrist, “big-tent” parties: Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the opposition conservatives, an alliance of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

Both have lost support in recent years, with smaller parties such as the Greens and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gaining ground.

The SPD, conservatives, Greens and AfD are all fielding candidates for chancellor.

Also running are the pro-market Free Democrats (FDP), the far-left Linke and the leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), who are all at risk of missing the 5 per cent threshold to make it into parliament, according to opinion polls.

Polls

The conservatives have been leading nationwide polls for more than two years and are at 30 per cent, according to the latest survey published by Forsa Institute on February 16, followed by the AfD at 20 per cent.

Scholz’s SPD, with 16 per cent, has dropped to third from the first place it achieved in the 2021 election. It is followed by the Greens on 13 per cent and Linke on 7 per cent. The FDP is polling at 5 per cent, with the BSW at 4 per cent, according to the latest poll.

Analysts say polls can shift quickly as voters are less loyal to parties than they once were. In the 2021 election campaign, the conservatives went from frontrunner to runner-up within a few months.

Berlin:

The German government pledged Sunday to fully investigate whether there were security lapses before the Christmas market car-ramming attack that killed five people and injured over 200.

Political pressure has built on the question of potential missed warnings about Saudi suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist who had made online deaths threats and previously had trouble with the law.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and the heads of Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence services are due to answer questions at parliamentary committee hearings on December 30, a senior lawmaker told AFP.

Faeser vowed Sunday that “no stone will be left unturned” in shedding light on what information had been available to security services ahead of last Friday’s bloody attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg.

She stressed that the attacker did “not fit any previous pattern” because “he acted like an Islamist terrorist although ideologically he was clearly an enemy of Islam”.

Abdulmohsen has in the past called himself a “Saudi atheist” who helped women flee Gulf countries and charged Germany was doing too little to help them.

In online posts, he also strongly criticised Germany for allowing in too many Muslim refugees and backed far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamisation” of Europe.

In one post, he wrote: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens?… If anyone knows it, please let me know.”

News magazine Der Spiegel, citing security sources, said the Saudi secret service had warned Germany’s spy agency BND a year ago about a tweet in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany would pay a “price” for how it treated Saudi refugees.

Die Welt daily reported, also citing security sources, that German state and federal police had carried out a “risk assessment” on Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he posed “no specific danger”.

“Blood and screams”

The city of Magdeburg has been in deep mourning over the mass carnage on Friday evening, when an SUV smashed through a crowd at its Christmas market, killing four women and a nine-year-old child and injuring 205 people.

Surgeons at overwhelmed hospitals have worked around the clock, and one health worker told local media of “blood on the floor everywhere, people screaming, lots of painkillers being administered”.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the “terrible, insane” attack and made a call for national unity, at a time Germany is headed for early elections on February 23.

But as German media dug into Abdulmohsen’s past, and investigators gave away little, criticism rained down from opposition parties.

Conservative CDU lawmaker Alexander Throm charged that “many citizens feel… that the Scholz government has completely failed in terms of internal security”.

He demanded greater police powers to monitor and analyse data from social media platforms, telecommunications and surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology.

The far-right AfD called for a special session of parliament, and the head of the far-left BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded that Faeser explain “why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand”.

Mass-circulation daily Bild asked: “Why did our police and intelligence services do nothing, even though they had the Saudi on their radar?… And why were the tips from Saudi Arabia apparently ignored?”

It charged that “German authorities usually only find out about attack plans in time when foreign services warn them” and called for sweeping reforms after the election for a complete “turnaround in internal security”.

Senior MP Dirk Wiese of Scholz’s Social Democrats said the December 30 hearings will summon the heads of the BND, the domestic intelligence service BfV and the Office for Migration and Refugees.

“Ultra-right conspiracy ideologies”

Media meanwhile reported more details on Abdulmohsen, who had worked at a clinic that treats offenders with substance addiction problems, but had been on sick leave since late October.

Der Spiegel reported that in 2013 a court fined him for “disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes” after he had darkly referenced the deadly attack on the Boston marathon.

The chairwoman of the group Central Council of Ex-Muslims, Mina Ahadi, said Abdulmohsen “is no stranger to us, because he has been terrorising us for years”.

She labelled him “a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies” and said he “doesn’t just hate Muslims, but everyone who doesn’t share his hatred.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Berlin:

This year has been Germany’s hottest since records began 143 years ago, its weather agency said Tuesday, matching unprecedented temperature highs felt around the globe.

“Never since the end of the 19th century has it been as warm in Germany as in 2024,” Tobias Fuchs of the German Meteorological Service (DWD) said in a statement.

The DWD did not give an average temperature for 2024 but said it will publish a full annual meteorological report on December 30.

Germany’s previous temperature record was reached in 2023, when the average temperature was 10.6C and floods hit southern areas of the country.

“The consequences of increasing global warming are hitting us with more frequent and more intense weather extremes,” Fuchs said.

“As a society and as individuals we must protect our climate much better.”

The European climate monitor said last week that 2024 was “effectively certain” to be the hottest year on record.

In another milestone, 2024 will be the first calendar year more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than in the pre-industrial era, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Scientists warn that exceeding 1.5C over a decades-long period would imperil the planet. Countries agreed under the Paris climate accord to strive to limit warming to this safer threshold.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Germany has offered to re-deploy Patriot air defence systems to NATO ally Poland.

Volkswagen AG is considering unprecedented factory closures in Germany in a bid for deeper cutbacks, delivering another blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government.

The potential measures, targeting its main passenger car brand as well as other group operations, also include trying to end the company’s pact with unions to keep jobs secure until 2029, the company said Monday.  

Any shutdowns would mark the first closures in Germany during the company’s 87-year history, setting VW up for a clash with powerful unions.

“The economic environment has become even tougher and new players are pushing into Europe,” VW Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume said in a statement. “Germany as a business location is falling further behind in terms of competitiveness.”

A full-blown labor dispute would be a major test for the CEO – who also heads up the Porsche sports car brand – after union clashes felled a number of his VW predecessors. The company has struggled to cut costs at its namesake passenger brand where profit margins have long lagged, with efforts becoming harder amid a sputtering transition to EVs and a consumer spending slowdown.

Works council head Daniela Cavallo said VW’s management had failed after meetings detailed that the company’s core brand, making the Golf and Tiguan models, threatened to become loss-making, according to a separate statement. The company is plotting to close at least one larger carmaking factory and one component site in Germany, it said, alongside abolishing wage agreements.

VW employs about 650,000 workers globally, almost 300,000 of which are in Germany. Half the seats on the company’s supervisory board are held by labor representatives, and the German state of Lower Saxony – which owns a 20% stake – often sides with trade union bodies.

Previous clashes ended or shortened the tenures of top executives including former CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder, ex-VW brand chief Wolfgang Bernhard and more Herbert Diess, Blume’s predecessor as CEO. All three tried to push through efficiencies particularly at VW’s domestic German operations.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Solingen, Germany, on September 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: via Reuters

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to win a state legislature election in Germany since World War Two

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the results of two regional elections that saw big wins for the far-right AfD and losses for his coalition “bitter” and urged mainstream parties to form governments without “right-wing extremists”.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to win a state legislature election in Germany since World War Two with its result in weekend voting in Thuringia. It came a close second behind the conservatives in Saxony, projections late on Sunday showed.

ALSO READ: Björn Höcke | AfD’s rabble-rouser

But the AfD, deemed “right-wing extremist” by security officials in both of the east German states, is unlikely to be able to govern as other parties have so far refused to collaborate with it to form a majority.

Still, the nationalist, anti-migration and Russia-friendly party could end up with enough seats in both states to block decisions requiring a two-thirds majority such as the appointment of judges or top security officials, giving it unprecedented power.

“The results for the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia are worrying,” Mr. Scholz said in a statement to Reuters. He clarified he was talking as a lawmaker for his centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

“Our country cannot and must not get used to this. The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation.”

With a year to go until Germany’s national election, the results on Sunday punished Mr. Scholz’s fractious coalition, which could aggravate infighting.

All three ruling parties lost votes, with only his SPD comfortably clearing the 5% threshold needed to stay in the two states’ parliaments.

Populist leftist newcomer, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), founded by a former member of the East German Communist Party, did better than all of three coalition partners in its first state elections, coming in third place.

“Sunday’s election results are bitter — for us too,” Mr. Scholz said. But he noted that the more dire predictions, that the SPD might fall out of a state parliament for the first time, had not materialised.

Junior coalition partners the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats both fell out of the Thuringia state assembly.

Sunday’s results could also pressure the government to be tougher on immigration and intensify the debate over support for Ukraine, issues that dominated the campaign.

A police officer stands outside the Islamic Center Hamburg with the Imam Ali Mosque during a raid Wednesday, July 24, 2024, Hamburg, Germany.
| Photo Credit: AP

The German government on July 24 banned a Hamburg-based organization accused of promoting the Iranian leadership’s ideology and supporting Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, as police raided 53 properties around the country.

The ban on the Islamic Center Hamburg, or IZH, and its various suborganizations elsewhere in Germany followed searches in November. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said material gathered in the investigation “confirmed the serious suspicions to such a degree that we ordered the ban today.”

The IZH “promotes an Islamist-extremist, totalitarian ideology in Germany,” while it and its sub-organizations “also support the terrorists of Hezbollah and spread aggressive antisemitism,” Ms. Faeser said in a statement.

Also Read: What is Hezbollah and what is its involvement in the Israel-Hamas war? | Explained

Her ministry alleged that “as the direct representative of Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution,” the IZH disseminates “the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in an aggressive and militant way and seeks to bring about such a revolution in the Federal Republic of Germany.”

The group, which runs a mosque in Hamburg, has long been under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. The IZH said last fall that it “condemns every form of violence and extremism and has always advocated peace, tolerance and interreligious dialogue.”

The Interior Ministry said that because of the ban, four Shiite mosques in Germany will be closed. The IZH’s assets are also being confiscated.

Berlin:

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country’s leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Passengers wait at a Lufthansa check-in counter at Munich Airport, Germany on March 7. 2024. The Verdi trade union is paralysing important parts of German air traffic on Thursday and Friday with renewed warning strikes by several professional groups.
| Photo Credit: AP

Millions of travellers across Germany were affected by strikes again on March 7 after two unions called for two-day walkouts over wages and work conditions.

Around 80% of all long-distance trains as well as regional and commuter trains in the country were cancelled as train drivers went on strike. Air travel was affected as well, as ground staff for German airline Lufthansa stopped working early in the morning.

Also Read | German transport hobbled by train strikes, farmer blockades

The strikes led to traffic jams in cities and on highways, a shortage of share and rental cars, and plane passengers trying to desperately rebook flights to reach their destinations. Students arrived late for school and employees struggled to arrive on time for work as millions who usually rely on commuter trains found themselves stranded or stuck in traffic.

Lufthansa said earlier in the week that about 1,000 flights per day would have to be canceled and that around 200,000 air passengers would be affected.

Negotiations continue for Lufthansa ground staff and German rail operator Deutsche Bahn’s train drivers. The train drivers’ union GDL and Verdi called for the strikes on Thursday and Friday.

The strike on long-distance and regional passenger train services began at 2 a.m. (0100 GMT) Thursday. According to GDL, it is to last until 1 p.m. Friday. For freight transport, the strike started Wednesday at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT) and is to last until 5 a.m. Friday.

In addition to pay raises, GDL has been calling for working hours to be reduced from 38 to 35 per week without a pay cut, which Deutsche Bahn has refused.

The Ver.di union seeks a 12.5% pay raise, or at least €500 ($542) more per month, in negotiations for nearly 25,000 Lufthansa ground workers including check-in, aircraft handling, maintenance and freight staff.

Coinciding contract negotiations have resulted in several walkouts in the rail, air and local transport sectors in Germany in recent months, testing passengers’ patience over and over again.

Train driver union GDL announced earlier this week that more strikes were coming in the near future, but said it would no longer announce them 48 hours in advance, giving travellers less time to look for alternatives.