Merkel party's battle with YouTubers escalates

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's favoured successor plunged into a new storm Tuesday, with her apparent call for limits to free speech around elections stoking further anger rather than putting down a raging youth-led YouTube revolt.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's call for "rules" for online media around election-time came after her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its centre-left coalition partner SPD suffered their worst scores in Sunday's European parliamentary vote.

The CDU, in particular, had been put on the back foot in the days leading up to the polls as 70 YouTube stars urged voters to punish the party for its failure to take adequate action to halt global warming.

Addressing the debacle on Monday, Kramp-Karrenbauer called for checks on the online influencers, saying that if 70 newspaper editors had made a concerted call to boycott parties ahead of an election, that would be classed "clearly as propaganda".

"The question is... what are rules from the analog realm and which .