Angela Merkel was sworn in on Wednesday for a fourth term as German chancellor.
Lawmakers voted by 364 to 315, with nine abstentions, in favor of re-electing Merkel, a humbling start as the coalition of her conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) has 399 votes in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
Her likely final term may prove her most challenging yet as she takes charge of a fragile coalition with her personal standing diminished.
“I accept the vote,” a beaming Merkel, 63, told lawmakers before being sworn in by Bundestag President Wolfgang Schaeuble.
In office since 2005, she has dominated Germany’s political landscape and steered the European Union through economic crisis.
But her authority was dented by her decision in 2015 to commit Germany to an open-door policy on migration, resulting in an influx of more than one million people.
She must now juggle competing domestic demands from her conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the SPD, just as Germany is locked in a trade stand-off with the United States.
“It is a good start for Germany to have a stable government… after so many months, there is now a big incentive to get down to work with energy,” Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.
Merkel starts work with a full inbox.
Abroad she faces the trade tensions with Washington, pressure from France to reform Europe, and from Britain to stand up to Russia.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said it was “high time for a new government” to go to work.
“It is good that the time of uncertainty is over,” he said at a ceremony with Merkel’s cabinet ministers.
On Tuesday, Merkel’s spokesman said she spoke by phone with British Prime Minister Theresa May and condemned a nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy in England for which May held Moscow
responsible.
Despite that, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Merkel on her re-election in a telegram.
Fault lines have emerged in the new government even before its first cabinet meeting, with tensions evident over the sequencing and extent of reforms.
The pressure is on for both camps to deliver: the inclusion in the coalition deal of a clause that envisages a review of the government’s progress after two years gives each the opportunity to leave the alliance then if it is not working for them.
The priority the government gives to different reforms set out in the coalition deal, the extent to which it implements them, and the personnel involved promise a welter of competing pressures that Merkel will need all her political skill to balance.
The SPD only agreed to ally with Merkel after promising a list of distinctive policies to secure the approval of party members, many of whom wanted the SPD to regroup in opposition after the last four years in coalition damaged its standing among voters.
On Friday, Merkel will travel to Paris to meet Emmanuel Macron, the French president’s office said, with the two leaders expected to discuss their plans for reforming the European Union.
She is expected in the afternoon for a “working session” with Macron, a statement said.
Macron, elected last May, has urged a major reform drive to reinvigorate the EU at a time of rising populist challenges, with proposals including a common eurozone finance minister and budget.
He sees it as crucial to secure the backing of Merkel as a heavyweight European leader and head of Europe’s biggest economy.
Merkel’s new left-right coalition says in its joint policy paper that it welcomes and generally supports the reform proposals of Macron and the European Commission, but stays vague on some of the details.
The coalition blueprint starts with the topic of Europe, with pledges to strengthen common EU foreign and defense policy as well as to reform the eurozone.
The plan supports the creation of a European Monetary Fund that could lend to countries in economic crisis, but pledges only to study some of Macron’s other ideas, notably the common eurozone budget and finance minister.
Merkel has also said Berlin remains opposed to any mutualisation of debt in Europe, in which the debt loads of individual countries would be spread across the bloc.