2:32 25 November 2021
Germany finally has a government and a new chancellor
Almost two months after the Bundestag elections, the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and FDP liberals will present a joint government program this afternoon. Olaf Scholz is to become the new chancellor after Angela Merkel.
The SPD won the September elections to the Bundestag with 25.7 percent of the votes. The Christian Democrats from the CDU / CSU lost 1.6 percentage points and it was their worst result ever. The Greens received 14.8 percent of votes, and liberals from the Free Democratic Party (FDP) –11.5 percent.
Coalition negotiations began on October 21, after three parties had previously held preliminary talks. This means that the parties took around 70 days to reach an agreement. After the 2017 elections, the formation of the so-called large CDU / CSU coalition with the SPD took Angela Merkel 171 days.
Until the very end of this year's negotiations, there were open questions about finance and climate policy, as well as the division of ministries. According to the German media, the contentious point of the talks was the portfolio of the minister of health. The epidemic situation in our western neighbors has clearly deteriorated in recent weeks, and there are over 50,000-60,000 new coronavirus infections a day. In this situation, no one was overly interested in taking over this ministry.
