Germany’s unprecedented failure to win one of the rotating seats on the UN security council has prompted an intense round of soul searching in Berlin, and raised questions about its claims to international leadership under Friedrich Merz.
The council vote on Wednesday, which elected Austria and Portugal to a two-year term along with Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe, was a blow to Merz’s struggling government, which has sought to position itself as a leading European voice on the world stage.
In an awkward rivalry among EU partners, Portugal took 134 votes and Austria 131 while Germany garnered just 104, significantly below the required 127 votes despite Berlin’s expressed confidence just hours before that it would prevail.
Both winners were seen to represent the interests of smaller countries, while Austria could benefit from its perceived neutrality as a non-Nato member and Portugal touted its strong ties in Africa and Latin America.
The Geran foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, who had lobbied hard for the seat, attributed the “bitter defeat” to Germany’s active role in rallying support for Ukraine and its staunch backing for Israel.
“We have always taken a clear stance on certain issues, and these are positions that not all member states share,” Wadephul told reporters. He called it “no secret” that Russia had rallied sentiment against Germany, now Kyiv’s biggest national provider of military aid.
“There is our firm support for Ukraine; the fact that [permanent member] Russia does not want such a voice at the security council,” he said.
“The fact that Germany must always assume a special responsibility for Israel in the Middle East conflict may also have cost votes,” he added, referring to Germany’s support for Israel as a key plank of its foreign policy in atonement for the Holocaust.
Wadephul said Germany would stand by Israel even if it did voice criticism of its government’s actions in Gaza, West Bank settlements and military strikes in Lebanon.
Merz himself, whose popularity has plunged in his first year in power, congratulated the winners of the secret ballot for five seats on the 15-member council and said Berlin’s commitment to the UN would remain unwavering.
Germany, the second-largest contributor country to the UN, remains a “reliable pillar of multilateralism,” he said, “acting with determination and a sense of responsibility”.
Since Merz took office last May at the helm of a loveless right-left coalition government, he has tried to steer Europe’s biggest economic power back to strength while making Berlin’s voice heard on global issues, backed up by a sharp increase in military spending.
The results at home and abroad have been mixed, even prompting speculation in recent days that Merz could be replaced as chancellor by a fellow conservative, Hendrik Wüst, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, if he fails to right the ship.
While such a scenario still seems highly unlikely, critics from across the political spectrum said Merz and his allies had themselves to blame for the latest debacle.
The opposition Greens called it an “embarrassing defeat”, with its deputy parliamentary group leader, Agnieszka Brugger, calling out a failure to “underpin this bid with modern ideas” about leadership on climate protection, the international rules-based order and development aid.
Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, now leading in German opinion polls, and a fierce critic of Berlin’s support for Kyiv, said in a scathing post on X that it confirmed a narrative of national decline.
“One embarrassment follows the next: while Merz had intended to bring our country ‘back on to the international stage’ at the start of his chancellorship, Germany now finds itself without a seat on the UN security council,” she said.
The Social Democrats, junior partners in the ruling coalition, joined in the criticism, saying the vote was “not a mere hiccup, but a warning sign”.
Its foreign policy spokesperson, Adis Ahmetović, said Berlin was paying the price for perceived hypocrisy with its restraint in criticising allies including Israel and the US. “Anyone who claims to be the guardian of the rules-based international order must not apply double standards when it comes to international law,” he told Spiegel magazine.
Merz initially withheld judgment on Donald Trump’s military attacks in Venezuela and Iran and their compliance with international law, before drawing the US president’s fury by saying the Americans were being “humiliated” by Tehran with their ill-prepared campaign.
Because of Germany’s militaristic past and fears of its renewed dominance in Europe, during most of the postwar period the country has leveraged its power within international institutions with “chequebook diplomacy”, making the freeze-out at the UN particularly painful.
Germany has served six times on the council, most recently in 2019-20.
Manuel Fröhlich, a political scientist at the University of Trier, in western Germany, said the high-profile campaign to win the seat right down to the wire would be a further drag on Merz’s drive for a comeback.
“The government would certainly have celebrated it as a success, and in that sense it will no doubt have to take responsibility for this defeat,” he told public broadcaster Phoenix. “In that sense, it is a significant setback.”