Germany loses UN Security Council seat to Austria and Portugal in first-ever election defeat

Germany was defeated in the first round of voting for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council on Wednesday, as the General Assembly in New York elected Austria and Portugal to the two seats reserved for the "Western Europe and Others" group for 2027-2028. Portugal received 134 votes and Austria 131, while Germany took 104 of the 190 ballots cast — clearly below the required two-thirds majority of 127 — according to the results announced by General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock, Germany's former foreign minister.

It is the first time Germany has failed in a Security Council election. The Federal Republic has sat on the council six times, most recently in 2019-2020, and has sought a seat every eight years since reunification — always successfully until now. Austria and Portugal had declared their candidacies several years before Germany and began campaigning earlier. In the same round, Zimbabwe was elected for Africa and Trinidad and Tobago for Latin America, while Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines both missed the two-thirds threshold in the Asia group's first ballot.

Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called the result a "real disappointment" but ruled out personal consequences, saying he had asked himself the question and had "personally nothing to reproach myself for." He blamed the timing of the bid: "In a relay race I would have been, so to speak, the final runner — and we see clearly today that it could no longer be made up." Hours before the vote he had spoken of a "fundamental sympathy for Germany" after days of courting diplomats in New York, and he described Austria and Portugal as "closely friendly European states" that had run "a fair and good contest."

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: "We applied with conviction. We did not achieve our goal." He added that "this result does not alter the tasks we face at the United Nations. Germany remains a reliable pillar of the multilateral system."

The opposition assigned blame directly. Greens defense politician Agnieszka Brugger said "this embarrassing defeat is down to Chancellor Merz and Foreign Minister Wadephul," arguing the government had done "far too little to back the candidacy with modern ideas" and had squandered "Germany's standing and responsibility in the world" through cuts to climate, humanitarian and development spending. Her party colleague Luise Amtsberg told the Rheinische Post the candidacy had been "half-hearted" and called the budget cuts to humanitarian aid a "fatal signal" to the international community. The SPD's Isabel Cademartori said Germany's standing had "extremely suffered" over its Israel policy — perceived in much of the Global South as unconditional backing of the wars in Gaza and now Lebanon — and over Berlin's reticence about the US and Israeli strikes on Iran. From the government benches, CDU/CSU foreign policy spokesman Jürgen Hardt called the failure "regrettable" and said the lesson was for Europeans to coordinate early "so we can avoid potentially competing bids."

Germany is the second-largest financial contributor to the UN, and Wadephul had campaigned on that record, on peacekeeping engagement and on a promise to support African states' push for permanent representation on the council — a months-long effort that ran from formal letters to paper gift bags with picnic blankets and gummy bears. DW correspondent Benjamin Alvarez Gruber reported that Russia waged an intense lobbying campaign against the German bid, with Germany a key supporter of Ukraine; Austria and Portugal were also seen by many delegations as better placed to represent the interests of smaller countries.