Germans are going to the polls on Sunday for national elections. Opinion polls suggest the outcome will be a new chancellor and, likely, a new governing coalition.

The conservative CDU/CSU alliance under Friedrich Merz is ahead in the polls, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) second and Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) coming third.

Germany's mainstream political parties lost support while the far-right AfD gained ground in one of the last polls published before the election on Sunday, pointing to likely tricky coalition building that could drag on for months.

Germany’s European neighbours are still friends and partners, even if political trends in France, Austria and parts of central and eastern Europe give rise to concern in Berlin. But far more worrying is the antagonism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and,