Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting has a mercurial streak
Editor’s note: On May 6th, Friedrich Merz fell six votes short of the majority he needed to become chancellor. He is allowed two further attempts to secure one; the timing of those has yet to be determined.
WHEN FRIEDRICH MERZ takes office as the tenth chancellor of the German Republic on May 6th, it will mark the culmination of a winding journey full of missteps and tumbles. So often the nearly-man of German politics, the 69-year-old Mr Merz has made no shortage of enemies over his long career—none greater than himself. The centrist coalition he has negotiated will begin its work amid economic and geopolitical tumult, and will be led by a man whose own character makes his approach to the job difficult to predict.
Mr Merz’s prosperous upbringing in the Sauerland, a well-to-do, rural Catholic region in Germany’s west, and his early career as a lawyer were not atypical for a future star of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (cdu). After a brief spell in the European Parliament, which many associates say left a lasting mark on him, in 1994 he entered the Bundestag and quickly made his name as an ambitious right-winger, pushing flinty proposals such as steeping immigrants in German culture.
His ascent—aided by a relationship with Wolfgang Schäuble, a cdu grandee whom Mr Merz has called “the closest friend…I ever had in politics”—seemed assured until he encountered an immovable object called Angela Merkel. In 2002 Mrs Merkel, the CDU’s leader, ejected Mr Merz from the party’s top ranks. Thwarted, he quit politics a few years later for a lucrative transatlantic career in the private sector, including a stint chairing the German arm of BlackRock, an asset manager. “There’s some truth to the claim that he only wants the top job as an act of revenge against Merkel,” says a CDU official who has worked with him. The next Christian Democratic chancellor still struggles to utter the name of the previous one in public.
Mr Merz’s years in the political wilderness coincided, not accidentally, with Mrs Merkel’s imperial phase. But he discreetly maintained his political links while earning his private-sector fortune, and when Mrs Merkel resigned the cdu leadership in 2018, Mr Merz threw his hat into the ring. The tale seemed almost Shakespearean: the luminary undone by hubris, returning after decades in exile to reclaim the mantle of leadership from his former conqueror. But those same flaws that had seen him flame out against Mrs Merkel—complacency, arrogance, an air of entitlement—saw him lose the contest to a Merkel protégée. When she flopped, Mr Merz lost a second contest. It was only in early 2022, with the cdu running out of options, that the party finally turned to him.
Some former foes were surprised to find that he could learn on the job. He silenced most doubters with deft outreach to the party’s liberal wing, and pacified the CDU’s restive Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union (CSU). He has also impressed many of those who work under him. He is a brisk, demanding manager in what a colleague calls “American-ceo style”, honed during his years in the private sector.
Many ordinary Germans, however, are put off by Mr Merz’s stentorian mode of address, not to mention his habit of flying himself to meetings in his private plane. That is not the whole story, colleagues insist. In more intimate circles he can be sentimental, even emotional, especially when children are involved. “People always say this about politicians,” says a colleague, “but his relationship with his family really is important. He’s completely different from the man most voters see.”
Yet Mr Merz repeatedly struggles to strike the right balance between intellect and impulse. “He has this side to him, the resentful, angry man,” says Mariam Lau, author of a forthcoming biography. “No one knows when it will pop up.” In a report in 2024 aptly titled “The demons of Friedrich Merz”, Der Spiegel described his threat to flounce out of the CDU’s leadership over the publication of a Merkel-friendly op-ed by a cdu rival. Marinated in the social conservatism of his homeland, Mr Merz has often had to apologise for off-colour remarks about gays or immigrants.
What most concerns Merz sceptics is that this caprice can find expression in erratic decision-making. In January, in the heat of Germany’s election campaign, Mr Merz decided to rely on support from the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) over a symbolic anti-immigration measure. It backfired. The cdu/csu slumped below 30% in the election on February 23rd. The afd notched up its best-ever result and Die Linke, a hard-left party energised by the furore, surged to a score that gave fringe parties enough seats to block constitutional changes in parliament.
Mr Merz was thus forced to push such changes, to fiscal and defence policy, through the old Bundestag before the new one convened. The move, necessary but completely counter to the tone of fiscal rectitude on which he had campaigned, revived old questions about his judgment. Doubt is once again growing within his own ranks. Just a third of voters expect him to do a good job, and the CDU/CSU has fallen behind the AfD in some polls. After his debt gambit he admitted: “I know that I have taken on a very large loan…including in terms of my personal credibility.”
This helps explain the divergence between the sky-high expectations for Mr Merz abroad, especially in Europe, and scepticism at home. Many German allies were delighted when Mr Merz declared, on election night, that Europe had to “achieve independence” from America. He is widely expected to focus on international affairs once in office. His will surely be a prominent voice at a series of upcoming gabfests, including a NATO summit in June.
But the home front cannot be neglected. With growth flatlining and industry flailing, the economy will not run on autopilot. Politically, the threat of the AfD is only growing. Mr Merz’s contempt for the party is genuine, but he must contend with growing ranks in the CDU, especially in east Germany, who want to dismantle the Brandmauer (firewall) that prevents co-operation with the AfD. Meanwhile, the political capital that Mr Merz has burned before even taking office will limit his ability to make further grand gestures abroad.
Loyalists say that once he has settled in, the gloom will lift and he will rebound in the polls. As the oldest new chancellor in 75 years, Mr Merz may anyway have only one term in him, and will surely not chase the popularity he has never managed to attain. Armed with what Mrs Merkel has called his “unconditional will to power”, he will instead try to etch his name in the history books. Those used to predictable German chancellors need to think again.■
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