Next German chancellor: The US is indifferent to Europe's fate
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The man due to become Germany's next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has issued a stark warning to Europe that the United States has become indifferent to the continent's fate and it must become independent. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had a record second-place result of 20.8%. We're in Berlin to cover the election result. Also in the programme: On the third anniversary of Russia's full- scale invasion of Ukraine, we speak to a member of parliament who is also a soldier; and the winners of the Screen Actors Guild Awards. (Photo: A poster of Friedrich Merz, the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party leader, hangs at the party headquarters near a poster of rival Olaf Scholz of SPD, after the general election in Berlin, Germany, February 24, 2025. Reuters/Angelika Warmuth)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour with Paul Henley in London and me James Kamara Sami in Berlin. |
| 0:08.8 | Later on in the programme, we'll hear from Ukraine on the third anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion. |
| 0:14.4 | But we begin here in Germany, one of Ukraine's main international backers. |
| 0:19.1 | As I sit here overlooking the famous Brandenburg gate, |
| 0:22.0 | I can see the Ukrainian flag fluttering over the German parliament building together with the EU |
| 0:27.9 | and the German flags. And where a new week has brought a new political reality with huge |
| 0:33.3 | implications for this, Europe's largest economy and for the transatlantic relationship. |
| 0:38.7 | After a short, intense election campaign featuring fierce debates about immigration and economic |
| 0:44.1 | stagnation and with the unprecedented intervention of senior American figures on the side of a far-right |
| 0:50.1 | party, the conservative Friedrich Meertz is poised to be Germany's next chancellor. Here's Christian Democratic Union or CDU. The Conservative, Friedrich Meertz, is poised to be Germany's next Chancellor. |
| 0:55.1 | Here's Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, the party of Angela Merkel, which wants to cut |
| 1:00.1 | taxes and red tape and to tighten border controls, won the largest number of seats, but fewer |
| 1:05.4 | than expected. The current Chancellor Olauelscholz saw his Social Democrats, or SPD, slumped to their worst result in more than a century, |
| 1:13.2 | beaten into second place by the far-right AFD, which doubled its share of the vote. |
| 1:18.3 | A fifth of Germans chose a party which, in some parts of this country, |
| 1:23.0 | has been classified as a far-right extremist organisation by domestic intelligence, |
| 1:27.6 | but which casts itself as a libertarian anti-establishment alternative. |
| 1:33.3 | Well, in his first post-election interview last night, Mr Mertz said |
| 1:36.4 | he wanted to quickly form a coalition to address the plethora of challenges the country faces, |
| 1:42.1 | and he restated there would be no coalition with the AFD. |
| 1:45.8 | But it was his comments about the transatlantic alliance that stood out, especially ahead of |
| 1:50.6 | today's visit to America, meeting with Donald Trump of the French leader Emmanuel Macron. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.