German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped down after 16 years in power, as the German parliament elects Olaf Scholz as the next leader of Europe’s biggest economy.
Merkel formally handed over the reins to her successor on Wednesday afternoon, in a bittersweet goodbye.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier formally appointed Scholz as Merkel’s successor on Wednesday after the parliament elected him chancellor.
“It will be a new beginning for our country. In any case, I will do everything to work towards that,” the 63-year-old said as he took his oath of office in an official handover ceremony in the Berlin parliament.
Scholz was elected chancellor after a secret ballot in which he won 395 out of 707 German lawmakers’ votes. Scholz will lead Germany’s first federal “traffic light” coalition, made up of the SPD, the ecologist Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), and named for the parties’ colours.
Scholz will head a three-way governing coalition consisting of the social democrat SPD party, the Greens and the liberal FDP.
