Friedrich Merz and his conservatives view Angela Merkel’s legacy as a liability in their battle with the far right.

It was a defining image of the Merkel years: the German chancellor leaning across a table at the G7 summit in 2018, looming over Donald Trump as the rest of the world’s leaders looked on. Angela Merkel, the photo seemed to indicate, was the adult in the room.

Ahead of Germany's February election, opposition leader Friedrich Merz advocates stringent border controls and faster deportations following a fatal knife attack by a rejected asylum-seeker. Tensions rise as Merz targets perceived failures in Germany's migration policy,

Donald Trump's return to the White House has darkened the mood in Germany a month before elections, as multiple crises shake the foundations on which Europe's biggest economy built its post-war prosperity.

The former German chancellor governed in turbulent times: the financial crisis, Russian aggression in Ukraine, Covid and beyond.

German voters head to the polls in a winter election next month, but likely will not have a new government until well into the spring.

W HAT DO Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz, the Bundesbank, the imf, the OECD, Germany’s biggest trade union, its state-appointed council of economic experts and most of its European allies have in common? Not much, on the face of it. But they all share the view that Germany’s “debt brake” is no longer serving the country well.

Germany’s opposition leader has vowed to bar people from entering the country without proper papers and to step up deportations if he is elected as chancellor next month.

With a month until Germany votes in the nationwide election, Brian Melican examines the growing influence of the AfD during the campaign – and explains why, in the short term, there is no way of stopping the far-right party’s rise in the polls.

German conservative leader Friedrich Merz has demanded fundamental changes to migration policy and a dramatic increase in deportations after the deadly stabbing in the southern city of Aschaffenburg.

Germany is witnessing an election campaign like none before it. With rare bouts of mud-slinging, a resurgent far right eyeing unprecedented gains, and war raging on the EU's doorstep - all set against the uncertain backdrop of a second Trump presidency - a nervous atmosphere permeates Europe's largest economy,