German Bundestag Elections 2025: Domestic and Foreign Policy Consequences

Abstract

The article analyzes the features of the early elections of the German Bundestag on February 23, 2025. The elections were early, which was due to the collapse of the coalition of the Social Democrats, the Green Party and the Free Democrats. The purpose of the article is to study the domestic and foreign policy consequences of the Bundestag elections. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, problem-chronological, historical-comparative methods. The scientific novelty of the article is due to the coverage of the political alignment of forces in the Bundestag after the elections and their impact on the domestic and foreign policy aspects of Germany’s development. The conclusions note that German politics is “stuck” between the politics of values and the politics of interests. German left and right populists, who found themselves outside the ruling coalition, are united in preventing a new war with Russia. German citizens who practice Islam voted for the Left Party, the Social Democrats and the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance in these elections. Coalition negotiations were complicated by expectations of a global economic recession. This made it difficult to reindustrialize the German economy. The coalition agreement was based on moderate reforms, restrictions on migration, and Keynesian methods of industrial policy. Many of the coalition policy objectives were not detailed and their conditional implementation was postponed until the end of the legislative period of the Christian Democrats, the Christian Social Union and the Social Democrats at the head of the German federal government.