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Germany news: Nearly half the country wants governing conservative coalition out

A survey has shown that just 30% of people in Germany want the coalition government to continue. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian demonstrators are to hold a march in Berlin to mark Nakba Day. DW has more. Read on here for our roundup of the top headlines from and about Germany  on Saturday, May 16, 2026: Some 1,000 people are registered to take part in a rally in the German capital on Saturday to mark Nakba Day , which commemorates the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians  in 1948 amid the foundation of the modern-day state of Israel. The rally in Berlin's Kreuzberg district is to take place under the motto "End the Occupation of Palestine — 78 years Al Nakba." An equal number of police are to be deployed. A counterprotest by the group Zionist Alliance Berlin has also been announced under the title "No Space for Antisemitism, No Tolerance for the Glorification of Terrorism" in the same district at the same time. Protests in 2022 and 2023 around Nakba Day, which is normally commemorated on May 15 each year, were banned by police for fear of violence . Such violence was indeed seen at the rally in 2025, during which several police officers were injured and 56 people were arrested. "Nakba" is the Arabic word for "catastrophe." Describing the events of 1948 in terms of a "Nakba" has been described by some Jewish bodies as antisemitic. The CEO of one of Germany's top carmakers, Mercedes-Benz, has said the company would be ready to help with arms production if the situation demanded it. "The world has become a more unpredictable place, and I think it is absolutely clear that Europe needs to increase its defense profile," Ola Källenius told US daily The Wall Street Journal on Friday. "Should we be able to play a positive role in that, we would be willing to do so," he added. He said that the arms sector would only make up a small part of the company's activities in comparison to its vehicle manufacturing operations, but that it could become a growing niche that contributed to the overall business. According to the Reuters news agency, the current boom in military expenditure in Europe could be leading other carmakers to also consider branching out into the defense sector. At the end of April, it reported that German carmaker Volkswagen was currently negotiating with the Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael Advanced Systems on possibly adapting its Osnabrück site to the production of missile-defense systems. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, has urged harsher penalties for antisemitic offenses, including the possible deportation of non-German nationals in the case of violent crimes. His remarks come amid a  rising rate of antisemitic incidents  in the country in recent years. Schuster told the weekly Welt am Sonntag  he believed more severe punishments were appropriate in cases of crimes such as denying Israel's right to exist. He criticized what he sees as excessive leniency toward offenders, saying there was sometimes more understanding for their point of view than for the victims. Schuster also said that it was legitimate "to consider and possibly use" the measure of deportation for  foreign offenders who had physically endangered others. "The state must be in the position to protect its citizens," he said, adding, however, that such measures had to be very carefully weighed up in view of the fact that "the definition of an antisemitic offense is broad." Schuster said, however, that right-wing extremist forms of antisemitism still found more of an echo within the German majority population than antisemitism with an Islamist motivation, but that neither form should be relativized. "For those affected, it makes no difference whether the threat comes from right, left or Islamist circles. It is the simultaneity and the interaction of these different streams that make the situation so difficult today," he said. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The Kremlin's envoy for Russia's business relations with other countries, Kirill Dmitriev, has hailed the results of a survey showing high popularity ratings for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. "The AfD became HOPE for the Germans," he wrote on X as a comment to a posting by AfD co-leader Alice Weidel with the survey results. Dmitriev is a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has previously voiced his backing for the AfD, which has often come under fire for its friendly attitude to Moscow despite Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. The anti-immigration AfD has received by far the highest popularity ratings of all parties in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt , where elections are to be held in September. However, it currently seems unlikely to find any coalition partners to form a government in either state, even if it does win a majority of votes. Most parties in the country have pledged not to work with the AfD, an approach known in Germany as the  Brandmauer , or  "firewall" against the far-right . The party has come under intense scrutiny from Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency for extremist tendencies, with local chapters in several states already classed as confirmed cases of right-wing extremism. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Some 47% of people in Germany would like to see an end to the current governing coalition of Chancellor Friedrich Merz 's conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), a survey has shown. The YouGov survey conducted for the weekly Welt am Sonntag  showed that 38% would like new elections after the coalition's dissolution, while 9% would want a minority government of Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) to stay at the helm. Altogether, 30% of respondents are in favor of the coalition continuing, with 24% undecided or responding with "don't know." The survey shows a divide in popularity ratings for the coalition between eastern and western German states, with 46% of people in eastern Germany wanting its end as compared with 35% in western Germany. Just 22% in eastern Germany wanted the coalition, which took office in May last year, to stay on, compared with 31% in western Germany. Merz, who himself has received popularity ratings as low as 16% in recent polls, admitted on Friday that the coalition could do with fewer internal disputes. "Maybe we are currently fighting a bit too much and are not delivering enough results. That may be possible," he told an audience at the 104th German Catholic Day in the southern city of Würzburg. Merz's government have struggled to find common ground  on a number of issues, including on social security and labor reforms, energy policy and, most recently, ways to cushion consumers from spiralling costs due to the Iran war . To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The DW newsroom in Bonn says guten Tag and willkommen  to its readers at the start of this spring weekend. The coalition government is, admittedly, unlikely to be feeling any of the joyous emotions normally associated with the season amid its falling popularity ratings. We look at a survey showing that almost half of people in Germany would, in fact, rather not have it lead the country. The increasingly popular far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) might well be basking in the praise it has just received from a Kremlin envoy, however. And in an interesting reflection of the current global security situation, one of the country's top carmakers has said it might be ready to turn to producing arms rather than luxury limousines if the situation requires it. You can read more about these and other stories making headlines in Germany in this blog.