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In other german news, the CDU has successfully finished painting itself into a corner: Thanks to questionable strategic decisions in the run-up to the election, there is literally a single party the CDU can realistically form a government with, the SPD. Worse yet, both want to push through new debts - the highest in the history of germany, and something the CDU explicitly denounced before the vote - which requires an amendment of the debt ceiling by a two-third majority. This is supposed to finance infrastructure + defense, though it's in practice only necessary because social government costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that the budget is full despite the highest government income in the history of germany.
In the new parliament, amending it would be impossible, as die Linke + AfD have more than one third and explicitly reject it. So they have to do it with the old parliament.
This has a multitude of problems; First, the practical one that it needs to include the Grüne as well. For this reason, the CDU has now mentioned the possibility of further amending the amendment to make clear that financing defense can also mean "pro-democracy" NGOs, which in practice means leftwing/green, and that financing infrastructure can also mean climate protection. It's a complete 180 on the proposed former course of cracking down on politically biased NGOs.
Second, while probably not against the letter, it is arguably against the spirit of the constitution on the question of the formation of a new government. That the old parliament still exists after the vote until the new one is formed is explicitly justified only on the grounds of emergency actions, otherwise it is supposed to be only a passive custodian. Of course the CDU now claims an emergency, but if so it is an emergency (well, multiple) that has been running for a decade if not longer.
Third, as already mentioned, the CDU explicitly denounced new debts as unconscionable, so not only making them anyway but even with the old parliament despite being the technical winner of the election reeks of blinking right while driving left, which even before the vote was one of the primary justifications for people to switch from CDU to other parties - If you want left, why not vote for it directly, if you want right, the only realistic option at this point seems to be the AfD. Hell, even the FDP had more spine, and that's considered the historically most spineless party for a good reason.
All of this taken together means that on the question of government formation, the SPD can behave on-par with the CDU despite having roughly half the vote, since the dependence on each other is perfectly symmetrical - neither can form a government without the other. And the Grüne can then basically dictate terms if this already biased alliance wants to get the amendment through at all. In fact, the Grüne has already publicly rejected one CDU offer of 50 billion explicitly for climate-related projects as not good enough. It's not clear whether they even want to cooperate, as a re-vote would probably hurt the CDU the most at this point.
TL;DR: Merkel has now officially endorsed Merz.
Is it really impossible to convince either of them to vote for this nonsense in exchange for some otherwise inconsequential symbolic gesture?
The CDU has openly stated multiple times that it is not willing to work with either, while it is already working with the Grüne in many local governments. They're already breaking multiple promises, but from my personal experience with local CDU politicians and voters (my childhood region votes > 50% CDU, including my mother and many old school friends), fighting communism and faschism (though the former is ironically more tolerated) alike is a core part of their ideology. Working with die Linke or AfD would be a serious ideological break difficult to talk away.
FWIW, I also concur with the CDU insofar as I think that either of die Linke or AfD would demand even more than the Grüne demands now.
I'm not so sure about that in AfD's case, although it's still a non-starter AIUI because the SPD and Greens would pull out to maintain the cordon.
Given that the whole point of the increased borrowing is to re-arm against Russia, and the AfD is fairly reliably pro-Russian, I don't think the AfD would want a deal on any sane terms.
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