The doubling of support for the far right in Germany’s federal election was “the last warning” to the country’s mainstream parties to provide effective leadership, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s victorious conservative alliance, has said.
On Monday the AfD co-leader Alice Weidel called her party’s performance “historic” and decried Merz’s refusal to enter into coalition with the AfD as a “democracy blockade”, arguing that millions of voters were effectively disfranchised by the decision.
Speaking on Monday after his CDU/CSU alliance came first with 28.5% of the vote, the man who is on course to become the next German chancellor said centrist parties needed to heed the surge in support for the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
Merz is instead preparing to begin the thorny task of forming a new government with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) of the outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in what Germans know as a grand coalition or GroKo.
“For a just peace, the attacked country must be part of peace negotiations,” Merz added, in what was interpreted as a sideswipe at the Trump administration after it last week began talks with Russia on ending the war that excluded Ukraine and Europe.
