A groundbreaking vote by outgoing MPs has given the chancellor-elect, Friedrich Merz, the chance to renew mainstream politics<\/p>\n
The first \u201cgrand coalition\u201d government in Germany\u2019s postwar history was formed<\/a> in 1966 to address an unexpected economic downturn, amid concerns over a nascent neo-Nazi far right. Nearly six decades later, as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic party (SPD) prepare<\/a> to join forces across the right-left divide for the fifth time, following February\u2019s snap election, the circumstances are superficially similar. The scale of the challenges, however \u2013 and the sense of jeopardy \u2013 are of a different order.<\/p>\n As geopolitical events have undermined its trade\u2011led business model, the German economy has been undergoing<\/a> the most prolonged period of stagnation since the second world war. Not unrelatedly, the extreme-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) party \u2013 elements of which are judged a threat<\/a> to the democratic constitutional order by security services \u2013 has risen in the polls to become the second-biggest party in the EU\u2019s most powerful member state. At the same time, a Putin-sympathetic Donald Trump is dismantling the transatlantic security guarantees on which Germany has relied in the postwar era.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A groundbreaking vote by outgoing MPs has given the chancellor-elect, Friedrich Merz, the chance to renew mainstream politics The first \u201cgrand coalition\u201d government in Germany\u2019s postwar history was formed in 1966 to address an unexpected economic downturn, amid concerns over a nascent neo-Nazi far right. Nearly six decades later, as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}