Germany’s Centre Right Alliance (CDU/CSU) managed to secure the most seats in the country’s parliamentary election on Sunday, suggesting a more innovation-friendly environment awaits.
Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU secured 28.52% of the vote while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured 20.8% of the vote. There are 733 seats in the German Bundestag and no party secured a majority, so a coalition will be formed.
Mark Foster, European Union policy lead at the Crypto Council for Innovation, expects that the Centre Right Alliance will likely support the European Union’s approach to digital innovation, he told CoinDesk in an interview ahead of the election.
“So I don’t expect a massive change overnight from the previous government to the new government in terms of either digital assets policy or digital euro, but perhaps an openness and a willingness to think about how these solutions can possibly help improve the competitiveness of the German and the European economy and bring in some jobs and growth in competition, which is clearly the overarching principle at the moment and priority for the European Commission,” Foster said.
Germany’s election so far has had little impact on crypto. The country, which is the European Union’s largest economy, called an early election after its coalition between the Social Democrats (SDP), Free Democratic party (FDP) and Greens collapsed in November.
Though the country was late in passing legislation to enforce the European Union’s bespoke Markets in Crypto Assets legislation — passing legislation days before the mandated implementation date in December — it still managed to process MiCA licenses over the past couple of weeks. And Foster doesn’t expect there to be “any impact in terms of the day to day implementation of existing EU law,” moving forward.
Next the freshly elected members of parliament will need to vote for the country’s new chancellor and head of the federal government.