Merz pledges reset as he admits German conservatives don’t have the ‘answers’ – POLITICO

BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday pledged to overhaul his party’s platform and decision-making processes after suffering another humiliating election defeat, calling the result a “major turning point.”

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won around 38% of the vote in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday — triumphing over Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which suffered its worst-ever result in postwar Germany and crashed out of the state parliament.

“It is a dramatic and unprecedented result for the CDU … an entire state parliamentary caucus has been eliminated from the state legislature,” Merz told reporters Monday at his party’s headquarters in Berlin. “We will feel its repercussions for a long time,” he added.