It’s a familiar political profile: a multimillionaire who promises to curb illegal immigration, crack down on crime, and dismantle progressive policies. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz also wants to cut taxes and deregulate the economy. And if the predictions hold true, he will soon be Germany’s new chancellor.
Then again, and not for the first time, the leadership role could slip from his grasp.
CDU’s Merz is poised to win the February 23 snap election after the center-left, three-way coalition led by Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats collapsed in November. If he wins, he will realize a decades-long ambition of becoming chancellor, a goal thwarted when Angela Merkel defeated him in the party’s 2002 leadership contest and went on to dominate the political arena for years. With his influence waning, Merz withdrew from politics and built a fortune as a lawyer and board member in major corporations. When Merkel stepped down after almost 19 years as party chair, he re-entered politics.
Merz, now 69, represents a sharp rightward turn from Merkel’s centrist legacy. His campaign motto is “A Germany we can be proud of again,” but the slogan, argues Hartwig Pautz, a political scientist at the University of the West of Scotland, is set to collide with some very harsh realities.
“Germany requires a modernization push,” says Pautz, “and for that, it needs to spend money, and lots of it. Merz and his Christian Democrats are in official denial about this, because Germans don’t like public debt even if it is invested into schools, roads, security, or into the technologies and industries of tomorrow.”
But once in government, he adds, Merz will have to face crumbling or outdated transport and digital infrastructures, an economy that is short on innovation, and an under-financed military.
“Merz will have to choose his coalition partner carefully if he wants to get things right,” Pautz cautions. “Germany’s recovery is important also for the EU, and a competent government will signal to voters beyond Germany that they do not need to look for solutions on the populist fringes of the right and the left.”
