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[00:00:06] Good evening everyone, welcome if you're joining us on France 24, you're at the heart of the news, we'll
[00:00:10] be together until 9 PM Paris time, here are the main headlines for this
[00:00:14] Sunday, polling stations closing in Germany, 4 million
[00:00:17] people were called to the polls for two regional elections, in Berlin and in
[00:00:21] the state of Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania,
[00:00:25] exit polls expected shortly,
[00:00:28] starting in Saxony. Two weeks ago, it's the score of the far-right
[00:00:32] AfD party that will be scrutinized, Chancellor Merkel already
[00:00:36] weakened, weakened, is now playing for her political
[00:00:39] survival, we'll join Caroline Dublei in Berlin in a few moments, and
[00:00:43] then we'll also discuss it with Antoine
[00:00:47] the means of Mariotti. Second day of Emmanuel
[00:00:50] Macron's visit to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, French territory located in the North
[00:00:54] Atlantic, an area coveted by President Donald Trump. Emmanuel Macron
[00:00:57] will meet today with the Canadian Prime Minister. Mark Carney, no
[00:01:01] doubt they will send messages to the American president,
[00:01:04] joint press conference to follow later on our
[00:01:07] channel. And 43rd edition of the European
[00:01:11] Heritage Days, some 11 million French people participate every year,
[00:01:15] an opportunity to discover exceptional sites usually closed to
[00:01:18] the general public, and among the curiosities this year,
[00:01:22] a replica of the Jean-Bart, a warship of Louis XIV that enthusiasts
[00:01:25] have been building for over 20 years in northern France, a report in this
[00:01:29] edition.
[00:01:35] who could potentially take over disappears from
[00:01:42] The polling stations are therefore closed in Berlin and in Mecklenburg
[00:01:46] Western Pomerania, two regional elections at high risk for Chancellor
[00:01:50] Fredrik Schmerz, already weakened by the historic victory of
[00:01:53] the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt two weeks ago, the radical
[00:01:57] left could also achieve a very good score in the capital.
[00:02:00] Uh, the first uh exit polls are coming
[00:02:04] in, the first estimates, we're going to join Caroline
[00:02:08] Duble right away in front of Berlin City Hall, good evening Caroline,
[00:02:11] what do the first trends
[00:02:13] tell us?
[00:02:18] Well, listen, from where I am in front of Berlin City
[00:02:21] Hall, uh I've only been able to get one piece of information, that of the
[00:02:25] CDU's result in Berlin, which would be 20% and which,
[00:02:29] uh according to my information, would be leading in Berlin, so a lesser
[00:02:33] disaster than what was expected.
[00:02:35] Indeed, the stakes were high today in Berlin after the
[00:02:39] elections in Saxony two weeks ago where the AfD, the far-right
[00:02:43] party, had made a historic
[00:02:46] disaster for the breakthrough and the CDU a similarly historic debacle. All
[00:02:50] score of the eyes in Germany were on and moreover the this regional election in Berlin, but also that of
[00:02:54] Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the stakes far exceed
[00:02:58] regional issues. One thing is
[00:03:08] a crisis unit, a crisis meeting is planned today at the CDU headquarters,
[00:03:12] the Chancellor should speak within 5 minutes
[00:03:15] after the first results. And indeed
[00:03:19] Caroline, the first figures are starting to reach us, so I'll
[00:03:23] share them with you for analysis. The AfD
[00:03:26] would have achieved, I don't know if you can hear me Caroline, 37% in
[00:03:30] Mecklenburg and 17%
[00:03:33] in Berlin, a strong surge therefore confirmed
[00:03:37] according to these exit
[00:03:39] polls.
[00:03:43] Yes, indeed, uh and the Chancellor
[00:03:46] had promised to halve the AfD's score, and here we see again they
[00:03:50] confirm their surge by doubling their scores in both
[00:03:54] regions, it's it's enormous. So they won't
[00:03:59] like be able, they certainly won't be able to form a government, the game of coalitions means
[00:04:03] that the other parties uh will be able to ally. They have
[00:04:06] decided on a sanitary cordon that makes them
[00:04:09] refuse any coalition with the AfD, but this, it
[00:04:13] confirms indeed their breakthrough in both regions, it's a debacle for the
[00:04:16] CDU and the Chancellor who is already extremely
[00:04:19] weakened by these results should speak
[00:04:23] shortly, he deliberately canceled his trip to New
[00:04:26] York to be present today in Berlin, which shows how much these
[00:04:30] regional elections have a national scope.
[00:04:34] Thank you very much, Caroline, for these initial details,
[00:04:37] you as these first exit polls,
[00:04:41] well, these first preliminary results, become
[00:04:44] clearer. We'll talk about it with you, Antoine Mariotti, good evening, Antoine.
[00:04:47] Good evening.
[00:04:49] Uh, so the confirmation that the AfD is making a strong surge not only in
[00:04:53] Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where uh the far-right
[00:04:57] is thus credited with approximately 37% of the votes. Whereas in
[00:05:00] Berlin, 17%.
[00:05:02] sees widespread discontent, most A score that is, if I'm not mistaken, almost doubled
[00:05:05] compared to the last election, which was in 2021, almost doubled. So
[00:05:09] in Berlin, during the last election, there was 9.1% for the
[00:05:13] AfD, so we had said it would double to around 18, it's a little less, it's 16-17%
[00:05:16] depending on the first results that are coming in. All of this will
[00:05:20] obviously be confirmed in the coming minutes, as it's coming in at the same time
[00:05:23] as we're commenting on it live here on France
[00:05:27] 24. It's still an extreme surge, and as Sophie
[00:05:30] Duble, our correspondent, just said, he had promised to
[00:05:34] reduce the impact of the far-right, but ultimately,
[00:05:37] it has intensified. It's a bit like what we saw in France,
[00:05:41] remember Emmanuel Macron said, "Well, I'm going to ultimately divide the votes of the far-right,"
[00:05:45] and we clearly see that today, it is stronger than ever and potentially
[00:05:48] in a position to reach the Élysée in a few months. And in
[00:05:52] Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the other region where there were
[00:05:55] elections today, so in the northeast of Germany,
[00:05:58] we're not in the capital this time. There was
[00:06:01] 16.7% in 2021, the AfD is rising
[00:06:05] to 37% and would be,
[00:06:09] well, we need to see if they are exactly, they were neck and neck, so
[00:06:12] are they ahead or is it the SPD? And
[00:06:16] the other question in that region is what is the CDU's score?
[00:06:19] If the score is at 5% or above, the
[00:06:22] CDU limits the damage and remains present in the European Parliament, because
[00:06:26] it's in the regional parliament, pardon me, let's not get carried away, but because
[00:06:30] you need to have 5% of the votes to be represented, for your party
[00:06:34] to be represented. If it falls just below, and that's
[00:06:38] a possibility because the voting intentions gave 6%, 7% with the margin
[00:06:42] of error, it was really very close. If it falls below, then the CDU
[00:06:46] the regional political landscape, and that would be a
[00:06:50] catastrophe for Fred Richmer, who would likely be pushed out, because even internally, we see that it's starting to get
[00:06:53] stuck. So even if he
[00:06:57] refuses to resign for now, so we see this podium from which there
[00:07:01] will be declarations later from the CDU, so the party of the
[00:07:04] Chancellor, I'm eager to know what he will tell us and what
[00:07:08] the refined scores that are coming in are.
[00:07:14] for indeed, for Berlin, it seems that the radical left, Die Linke, is ahead of the
[00:07:18] party of Chancellor Fredrik Schmerce, so the CDU,
[00:07:22] this debacle for the CDU, in any case, that's what we can say for
[00:07:25] sure at this stage. So if the radical
[00:07:28] left wins in Berlin, it means that the CDU, which held Berlin, which was both
[00:07:32] mayor and governor of Berlin, it's the same position since it's a state in
[00:07:36] itself, but it's obviously the important
[00:07:38] city of Germany, it was
[00:07:42] held. by the CDU, it was threatened by Die Linke, so the
[00:07:45] radical left party, so this time it's towards the far left
[00:07:49] and not towards the far right, it depends on the regions, well, the
[00:07:53] CDU would therefore lose Berlin, which would obviously be a
[00:07:58] Chancellor
[00:08:03] AfD, which is not very far behind the far right, still shows
[00:08:07] that there is also a general disaster both for the Chancellor and
[00:08:11] for the politics and traditional parties, I want to say,
[00:08:14] that we have known in Germany, please stay with
[00:08:18] us Antoine, we're heading back to Berlin, to
[00:08:21] rejoin Caroline Duplet, our correspondent.
[00:08:25] Caroline, do you have any more precise results at this stage?
[00:08:29] In any case, what is certain, as Antoine Mariotti and I said, is that
[00:08:32] this is a real debacle for the CDU and for the
[00:08:35] German Chancellor Friedrich
[00:08:38] personally,
[00:08:42] Yes, absolutely. As you said, the CDU will
[00:08:45] lose the mayoralty and the state of Berlin, and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
[00:08:48] there too the results are becoming clearer, it's once
[00:08:52] again the AfD, so the far- right, that wins the election
[00:08:55] with 37%, ahead of the outgoing
[00:08:59] candidate, Minister-President Manuela Schwesig, who was extremely
[00:09:02] popular and who seemed to have made up ground in recent days,
[00:09:06] she is at 35%, so 2 points behind, and
[00:09:10] the CDU is credited with... 5% of the
[00:09:13] votes, we will still have to wait for more precise counts to
[00:09:17] know if it will be able to enter parliament or not, it was this fateful
[00:09:21] 5% threshold that we were watching very closely, if the CDU were
[00:09:24] not even represented in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern parliament, it would be an even
[00:09:28] worse debacle for the Chancellor. We are waiting with impatience for his statements
[00:09:31] from the CDU headquarters in Berlin. Thank you
[00:09:35] very much Caroline,
[00:09:37] uh Antoine, this surge of the AfD, it's therefore the failure of the
[00:09:40] CDU, but more generally of the traditional parties in Germany, how
[00:09:44] to explain this surge? Yes, clearly, this figure
[00:09:48] that Caroline gives us, and not Sophie as I said earlier, I don't know why,
[00:09:52] of 5% for the CDU, it's really the figure to watch
[00:09:56] because if it's just below at 4.9 or 4.8, then
[00:09:59] that's an absolutely catastrophic situation for
[00:10:03] Fredrik Schmerz. You're right, it's symptomatic of many countries'
[00:10:06] traditional political parties, I want to say, in Germany,
[00:10:09] but pretty much everywhere in Europe that
[00:10:15] often from the far right, the far left, this sort of
[00:10:18] general fed-up attitude of saying that all these politicians for decades, they haven't
[00:10:22] managed to improve our living standards. To
[00:10:25] make our lives better, we see right now, for example, that fuel prices
[00:10:29] are soaring everywhere with terrible diesel prices, we're talking about a return
[00:10:32] of the Yellow Vests in France for example, and everything. France is not an island,
[00:10:36] just like Germany, we see that it affects many countries, in the
[00:10:40] United Kingdom, for example, the far right of Nigel Farage is also skyrocketing
[00:10:44] and is extremely threatening, so all of this is something
[00:10:47] quite continental and not just the United States obviously with Donald
[00:10:50] Trump, I'm not telling you anything new, we happen to talk about it from time to time
[00:10:54] on... all our media and especially on France 24, it's also
[00:10:58] a populist surge of a "throw them out" mentality, I want to
[00:11:01] tell you, now how will that materialize very
[00:11:04] concretely for the coalition in Germany, we see
[00:11:07] Frederick,
[00:11:10] I'll get there, excuse me, I'm bugging on
[00:11:12] air, I think they're archive images, there, he's going to
[00:11:16] speak soon from a crisis meeting, it'll be interesting to see
[00:11:19] what lessons he takes from
[00:11:23] this, because if he's under 5%, it's catastrophic, if he's over
[00:11:26] 5, he saves face a little, but it's still a resounding
[00:11:30] failure because when you're at only 5%, while the AfD, the far right, is at
[00:11:34] 37%, so 32%
[00:11:37] ahead, it's a cataclysmic result nonetheless for the
[00:11:41] CDU, so he says, "Look, I was elected with a coalition on a
[00:11:44] reform program, I'm going to see it through, I'm going to continue," while there are increasing
[00:11:48] calls for him to resign, and especially within
[00:11:51] his own party, we see CDU party officials
[00:11:55] who, in recent days and weeks, have let slip names of people
[00:12:00] from Merkel without blowing up the governing coalition at the national
[00:12:04] level, so federal, even so, but by
[00:12:07] replacing him because he's very unpopular, and I'll just give you a figure, it's
[00:12:11] the Infratest d'imap institute, which has its own polling
[00:12:14] institute, which said that in recent days, only 13%, 13%,
[00:12:18] he's been there for 16 months, he doesn't even have 16%, he has 13% of
[00:12:22] Germans who say they are satisfied with his political action. And according to this
[00:12:25] institute, these are simply the lowest figures ever recorded
[00:12:29] for a sitting chancellor. Thank you, Antoine. So that's what we can say
[00:12:33] at this stage about this double regional election in Germany. So I remind
[00:12:36] you, the far-right is experiencing a very strong surge,
[00:12:40] not only in Berlin where it almost doubles its score, but
[00:12:44] also in the state of Mecklenburg, Western
[00:12:47] Pomerania, where the AfD would therefore garner
[00:12:50] 37% of the votes according to exit polls. We will of course come back to it
[00:12:54] as these results become
[00:12:57] clearer. Second day of Emmanuel
[00:13:00] Macron's visit to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, a French territory located in the North
[00:13:04] Atlantic, an area coveted by President Donald Trump. Emmanuel Macron
[00:13:08] will meet this Sunday with Canadian Prime Minister Marc Carney,
[00:13:11] a press conference to be followed later on our air,
[00:13:15] no doubt they will send messages to the American president a few
[00:13:18] weeks after Donald Trump published on social media a
[00:13:22] map representing the United States, Canada, Greenland,
[00:13:25] or Saint-Pierre and Miquelon thus wrapped in the American
[00:13:28] flag. We're going to listen to Emmanuel Macron on this subject, it was during his
[00:13:32] arrival on the archipelago last night.
[00:13:35] It is obvious to us that these territories are French territories
[00:13:39] attached to France, proud to be French as
[00:13:42] we are, and territories liberated by
[00:13:46] Free France, and let's not forget that Christmas
[00:13:49] Day, so we are attached to it, there is no debate, there
[00:13:53] is no discussion, so we Here, France is present thanks
[00:13:57] to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, by Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, here at the heart of the
[00:14:00] global issues in this region, and
[00:14:04] this also links us with Canada, and so it will be a way to
[00:14:08] talk about the future together and to consolidate our relationships in
[00:14:11] many areas. That's it, and to follow, a joint press
[00:14:15] conference by Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Marc Carney, from
[00:14:19] Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, it will be at 6:50 PM Paris
[00:14:22] time. As I said.
[00:14:25] Also in the headlines, the 43rd edition of the European Heritage Days,
[00:14:28] some 11 million French people participate every year,
[00:14:31] an opportunity to discover exceptional sites usually closed to
[00:14:35] the general public, and among the curiosities to see this year, a
[00:14:39] replica of the Jean-Bart, a warship of Louis XIV that enthusiasts
[00:14:42] have been building for over 20 years in northern France, a report by Jade
[00:16:06] news, stay with us... we'll be back right away.
[00:16:22] And now it's time for our show,
[00:24:49] the
[00:28:28] France24, France24.com and all your social networks, see
[00:28:31] you soon.
[00:30:06] Good evening everyone, welcome if you're joining us on France 24, you're at the heart of the news, we'll
[00:30:10] be together until 9pm, Paris time, here are the main headlines of this
[00:30:13] Sunday, polling stations closing in Germany, 4 million
[00:30:17] people were called to the polls for two regional elections, in Berlin and in
[00:30:21] the state of Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania,
[00:30:24] exit polls expected shortly,
[00:30:28] how has Saxony changed in two weeks, it's the score of the far-right
[00:30:31] party that will be scrutinized, Chancellor Merkel already
[00:30:35] weakened, weakened is now fighting for her political
[00:30:39] survival, we'll join Caroline
[00:30:42] Dubley in Berlin in a few moments, and we'll also talk about it with Antoine
[00:30:45] Mariotti.
[00:30:48] Second day of Emmanuel Macron's visit to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon,
[00:30:51] French territory located in the North Atlantic, an area coveted by President
[00:30:55] Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron will meet the Canadian
[00:30:59] Prime Minister today.