Sept 26, 2021: The Germans voted in a close national election on Sunday, with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) challenging Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Conservatives to retire.

Merkel has been in power since 2005 but plans to step down after the election, making the vote a turning point in shaping the future of Europe’s largest economy.

The broken electorate means that after the election, the leading parties will sound out each other before starting more formal coalition talks, which could take months. Merkel, 67, will be left in the caretaker role.

Campaigning in his home constituency of Aachen alongside Merkel, conservative candidate Armin Laschet said on Saturday that a leftist alliance led by the SPD with the Greens and the hard-left Linke party would destabilise Europe.

Fighting against Laschet is SPD’s Olaf Schulz, the finance minister in Merkel’s right-left coalition who won all three television debates between the leading candidates. Schulz, 63, did not rule out a left-wing alliance with the Left, but said NATO membership was a red line for the SPD.

Following a domestic-centric election campaign, Berlin’s allies in Europe and beyond may have to wait months before they see whether the new German government is willing to act on foreign issues.

The divided political landscape means that a tripartite alliance is possible. The final vote gave the Social Democrats a narrow lead, but conservatives have narrowed the gap in recent days and many voters were still undecided.

The most likely coalition scenarios see either the SPD or the conservative CDU/CSU bloc – whoever comes first – forming an alliance with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Scholz told supporters in his own constituency in Potsdam near Berlin that he was still hoping the SPD and Greens would secure a majority to rule alone without a third partner.

Both the conservatives and the FDP reject a European “debt union” and want to ensure that joint European Union borrowing to finance the bloc’s coronavirus recovery package remains a one-off. The SPD has talked about taking steps towards a fiscal union.

Whereas, the Greens favour a common European fiscal policy to support investment in the environment, research, infrastructure and education.

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