Germany’s Merkel Wins EU Vote Seen as National Election Test - by Brian Parkin
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats beat the Social Democrats in European Parliament elections yesterday with less than four months to go before a national vote, preliminary final results showed. The Christian Democratic Union and their Bavarian Christian Social Union sister party got 37.9 percent, according to results reported by Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The Social Democratic Party with chancellor candidate Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier got 20.8 percent.
“It’s a very successful election for Merkel,” Jan Techau, an analyst at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. “It’s a pretty strong signal that German voters prefer the center-right parties because people expect them to be more competent on the economy.” Merkel’s preferred coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democrats, won 11 percent. This would mean that Merkel would be close to majority for a CDU/CSU-FDP alliance if today’s balloting had been for a national vote.
Note EU-Digest: With Sarkozy and Merkel winning big in these European elections, Europe's political dream team is alive and well and that is positive for Europe.
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