Latest German election humiliation puts Merz on borrowed time as CDU unrest grows – The Guardian

Latest German election humiliation puts Merz on borrowed time as CDU unrest grows  The GuardianOpinion | Germany Is in Danger. But There’s Still Time.  nytimes.comMerz’s woes cast doubt over EU’s €2tn budget deal  Financial TimesFriedrich Merz rues “disaster” as populists win state elections  The EconomistGerman voters turn to left and far-right as ‘disaster’ for ruling CDU threatens pro-growth reforms  CNBC

Chancellor acknowledges disastrous state election results but vow to push on is likely to further alienate voters, and his own party German chancellor clinging to power after another loss to far-right AfD Friedrich Merz called it a “disaster”, and that was even before the full scale of the catastrophe for himself and his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) came into view after Sunday’s state elections. In what one outlet called a “power move”, the German chancellor made a highly unusual televised speech just minutes after polls closed in the states of Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, attempting to get ahead of the narrative with a pledge to stay on and fight for his economic recovery programme.

But as the results trickled in, it became apparent that the CDU had not only scored its worst-ever result in a state election, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it had crashed out of a regional parliament altogether for the first time in postwar history with just 4.9% of the vote in the region on the Baltic coast. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came out on top for the third time in a German