Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, I Zuzana Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today we will talk about the German elections. Sunday's elections gave a clear victory to Friedrich Mertz, as expected.

What was perhaps not expected is the loss of a two-thirds majority for the centrist parties in the new parliament.

This will have important consequences which we will discuss later. But it is interesting that

we were talking about small parties. Of the small parties, only the left party got in and the

others got out. A few months ago, it was the the other way around it was sure that we all sure

that the left party would not make it but the other two small parties had had a chance so the

FTP is out and the Wagenst party is out by whisker it was only 13,000 votes in the end that

separated it from representation but these votes votes, as we always said,

had important consequences for the coalition. Now, we have a two-party coalition. Two-party,

if we count C-DU and CSU as Bavarian sister party as a single party. So there will be another

grand coalition. Most likely, the SPD is still not decided. They still have to go through. They will,

they will in the end, accept it, but they will also stake their term. This is not a no-brainer.

Friedrich Merz wants to form a government by Easter, so that would give him six to seven weeks

to negotiate a coalition. It wouldn't be particularly fast historically, but given the SPD's own procedures,

you know, the need for a membership vote, and also the difficulty of the discussions, I think

this is rather optimistic. But we are heading into a new era. Merz has committed not to form a coalition

with the AFT. And while we shouldn't believe everything he said, he's also made similar promises

about legislation that he wouldn't pass legislation with the help and he did.

So we know that these promises are only good for as long as they are made and they can change

at any time and should this coalition fail, who knows what scenario we will be in.

You know, I'm not taking this as a red line, but I do take it as a red line for now.

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