Angela Merkel sworn in for 4th term as German chancellor

Angela Merkel has been sworn in for a fourth term as German chancellor, and is poised in a couple years to become the country's third-longest-serving leader.

Parliament Speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble administered the oath of office to Merkel, who pledged to "dedicate my efforts to the well-being of the German people, promote their welfare [and] protect them from harm."

Legislators voted 364-315 earlier Wednesday to re-elect Merkel, nearly six months after GermanyTakes's election and following lengthy coalition-building efforts. She received nine more votes than she needed, but 35 votes fewer than the number of seats held by the "grand coalition" of her conservative Union bloc with the centre-left Social Democrats.

The rest of Merkel's 16-member cabinet will be sworn in later Wednesday, and will include new faces for some key posts, namely the Finance, Foreign, Economy and Interior ministries.

Merkel has been chancellor since November 2005. In about two years, she will overtake postwar West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as the third-longest-serving national leader in German history, and if she serves out a full four-year term through fall 2021, she would come close to Helmut Kohl's 16 years as chancellor.

Only Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of unified Germany, served longer.

Takes pragmatic approach

The conservative Merkel has stamped her mark on Germany's political centre ground with a pragmatic approach and willingness to adopt liberal competitors' ideas, and has often reassured Germans by convincing them she is on top of complicated crises.

She led a hard-nosed response to the eurozone debt crisis and allowed in a large numbers of migrants in 2015, a move that was divisive both at home and abroad.

Merkel's new vice-chancellor, centre-left Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, takes over as finance minister after steely conservative Wolfgang Schaeuble, now the parliamentary Speaker, held the post for eight years.

The new foreign minister is Heiko Maas, justice minister in Merkel's outgoing government, but a newcomer to foreign policy. Sigmar Gabriel, the outgoing foreign minister and a fellow Social Democrat, said Maas will do an "excellent" job.

Peter Altmaier, a conservative, is close to Merkel and has been her chief of staff since 2013. He takes over the Economy Ministry, while Horst Seehofer, leader of Bavaria's Christian Social Union party and an often-awkward ally to Merkel, becomes Germany's interior minister.

The coalition of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, its Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union and the center-left Social Democrats has 399 seats.

The same parties have governed the past four years, but putting together the new coalition has been hard work. Wednesday's parliamentary vote came 171 days — nearly double the previous record — after September's election, in which they all lost significant ground. The Social Democrats initially planned to go into opposition.