German parliament confirms Merkel as Chancellor for fourth term

BERLIN, Mar 14 (AFP): German Chancellor Angela Merkel, bruised by half a year of post-election coalition haggling, was elected by parliament Wednesday to her fourth and likely final term at the helm of Europe's biggest economy.

Lawmakers in Berlin's glass-domed Reichstag voted 364-315 with nine abstentions for Merkel who was then to be formally appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier before taking the oath of office at 1100 GMT.

Merkel, wearing a white blazer, said "I accept the vote" and beamed happily as applause filled the Bundestag chamber, where her scientist husband Joachim Sauer and her 89-year-old mother Herlind Kasner were among the well-wishers.

For the veteran leader, the ceremony marked the end of a painful stretch of post-election paralysis, the deepest crisis of her 12-year career.

A right-wing populist rise in September elections weakened all mainstream parties and deprived Merkel of a majority, forcing her into another unhappy alliance with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The grand coalition, mockingly dubbed a "GroKo" in German, didn't start as a "love marriage", her designated vice chancellor and finance minister, the SPD's Olaf Scholz, drily observed this week.

All coalition partners have nonetheless sought to allay fears that their marriage of convenience could break up mid-term, insisting they plan to jointly govern until 2021.

From 1600 GMT, Merkel sits down with her new cabinet, in which the SPD has wrested both the trophy posts of finance and foreign affairs to the dismay of a growing band of critics within her Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

On Friday Merkel will head to Paris to discuss EU reform plans with French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of a March 22-23 summit, after a six-month stretch in which Berlin was hamstrung on the European and world stage.

Macron warned in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily that, without Germany on board, "part of my project would be doomed to failure".

"We are completely dependent on each other. I do not believe for one second that a European project without or against Germany could succeed."

Merkel's incoming coalition has broadly welcomed Macron's bold reform plans, meant to reinvigorate the bloc and counter extremists and populists who have made major gains in Western democracies.

She has argued that the EU must increasingly look after its own interests in the era of US President Donald Trump, who has questioned long-standing transatlantic defence ties and threatened a trade war.

Berlin advocates closer EU cooperation on defence, immigration and plans for a European Monetary Fund. But it is lukewarm on the idea of a joint eurozone finance minister and rejects any pooling of debt.

Scholz, who takes over from CDU fiscal hawk Wolfgang Schaeuble, has made clear he will stick with Berlin's cherished "black zero" policy of avoiding new public debt.

The rise of populist fringe parties is also the central domestic threat for Merkel's new coalition, which will face the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the biggest opposition party.