German parliament votes on whether to approve Friedrich Mertz as chancellor

Friedrich Merz, Christian Democratic Union party chairman, addresses the media after reaching an agreement between their parties on a coalition for a new German government at a news conference in Berlin, Germany (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

German legislators are set to vote on whether conservative leader Friedrich Merz will become the country’s tenth chancellor since the Second World War.

Mr Merz seeks to take the helm of the 27-nation European Union’ s most populous member after outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government collapsed last year.