Bruised by months of post-election haggling, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is confirmed for fourth term
Parliamentary vote came 171 days after the election, nearly double the previous record
Germany’s parliament elected Angela Merkel for her fourth term as chancellor on Wednesday, putting an end to nearly six months of political drift in Europe’s biggest economy.
Lawmakers voted 364-315 to re-elect Merkel, Germany’s leader since 2005, who ran unopposed. The coalition of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, its Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union and the centre-left Social Democrats has 399 of the 709 seats in parliament.
Merkel, wearing a white blazer, said “I accept the vote” and beamed happily as applause filled the Bundestag chamber, where her scientist husband Joachim Sauer and her 89-year-old mother Herlind Kasner were among the well-wishers.
Merkel will head a much-changed new Cabinet, with the governing parties – which are traditional rivals – keen to send signals of renewal after a September election in which all lost significant ground. There are new faces in the most important posts, the finance, foreign, economy and interior ministries.
The same parties have governed for the past four years but putting together the new administration has been unprecedentedly hard work.