Conservative leader Friedrich Merz won a parliamentary vote to become Germany’s next chancellor after two attempts on Tuesday.
Merz initially fell six votes short of the absolute majority he needed, a significant blow to his prestige and an unprecedented failure in post-war German history.
As it was a secret ballot in the 630-seat Bundestag, no indication had refused to back him, whether MPS from his centre-left coalition partner or his conservatives.
After hours of uncertainty in the Bundestag, the parties and the president agreed to hold a second vote, which Merz then won with 325 votes, a majority of nine.
His coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) should have had enough seats in parliament from the start, with 328 MPS in total, but it appears 18 of them dissented during the first vote.
No chancellor candidate has lost a Bundestag vote in the 76 years since democracy was restored in Germany in 1949, and there was a prevailing mood of confusion in parliament hours after the vote.
Under Germany’s constitution, there is no limit to the number of votes that can be held.
Another defeat for Merz would have been problematic for his Christian Democrats, their sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and their partner, the Social Democrats.
A total debacle had been averted, declared one German news website.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will now swear in Merz, 69, as chancellor, and his team of 17 ministers will take office.
Bundestag President Julia Klöckner had initially been planning a follow-up vote on Wednesday, but Christian Democrat General Secretary Carsten Linnemann said it was essential to press ahead.
“Europe needs a strong Germany, that’s why we can’t wait for days,” he told German TV.
Parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn appealed to his colleagues’ sense of responsibility: “All of Europe, perhaps the whole world, is watching this ballot.”
Political commentators had seen Merz’s defeat as a humiliation, possibly inflicted by a handful of disaffected members of the Social Democratic SPD, which signed a coalition deal with his conservatives on Monday.
The Bundestag president told MPS that nine of the 630 MPS had been absent for the first vote, three had abstained, and another ballot paper had been declared invalid.
Not everyone in the SPD was happy with the coalition deal, but party officials were adamant their party was fully committed to it.
“It was a secret vote so nobody knows,” senior Social Democrat MP Ralf Stegner told the BBC, “but I can tell you I don’t have the slightest impression that our parliamentary group wouldn’t have known our responsibility.”