BERLIN – Germany ’s center-left Social Democrats have approved a deal to join a new coalition government, paving the way for parliament to elect conservative leader Friedrich Merz as the country’s new chancellor.

The party of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholtz will join a coalition led by Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, which won Germany’s election in February with 28.5%.

The Social Democrats suffered their worst result since World War II, finishing third with just 16.4% of the vote. But the conservatives need their support to assemble a parliamentary majority without the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, which finished second.

The Social Democrats put a coalition agreement reached in early April to an online ballot of their 358,000-plus members, who voted over the last two weeks. The party announced Wednesday that 56% of their members voted in the poll, of which 84.6% cast their ballots in favor.

The deal gives the Social Democrats the crucial finance, justice and defense ministries, among others. The CDU and CSU previously approved the agreement.

The lower house of the German parliament will meet on May 6 to elect Merz as the country’s 10th leader since World War II.

The coalition aims to spur economic growth, ramp up defense spending, take a tougher approach to migration and catch up on long-neglected modernization for the 27-nation European Union’s most populous member. Germany has the continent’s biggest economy.

The coalition has a relatively modest majority, with 328 of the Bundestag’s 630 seats.

The Union and Social Democrats have governed Germany together before: once in the 1960s, and then in three of the four terms of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who led the country from 2005 to 2021.