Left Social Democrats in Germany approved a deal to join a new coalition government, paving the way for parliamentary elections to Conservative leader Friedrich Merz to the country's new prime minister.
The outgoing Prime Minister Olaf Scholtz party will join the coalition led by Merz's central right-wing Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, Christian Social Union, which won the German election in February as 28.5%.
Social Democrats have suffered their worst results since World War II, with only 16.4% of the votes finishing third. However, conservatives need their support to group suggestions will be a majority, without the far-right, anti-immigrant alternative, Germany ranks second.
Social Democrats submitted a coalition agreement to an online vote of more than 358,000 members in early April, and they voted in the past two weeks. The party's youth forces opposed the deal.
The party announced on Wednesday that 56% of their members voted in the poll, with 84.6% of them favoring the vote.
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The agreement provides Social Democrats with key finance, justice and defense departments, among others. The CDU and CSU have previously approved the agreement.
The German Parliament's lower house will meet on May 6 to elect Melz as the country's tenth leader since World War II.
The alliance aims to stimulate economic growth, increase defense spending, adopt a tougher immigration approach and catch up with the long-term migration modernization of the largest and most populous members in 27 countries. Germany has the largest economy on the mainland.
The alliance has a relatively modest majority, with 630 seats in 328 federal governments.
Trade unions and Social Democrats have previously ruled Germany at the same time: once in the 1960s, and then led the country from 2005 to 2021 during four terms of former Prime Minister Angela Merkel.
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