When ordinary Germans approach Friedrich Merz in public, it’s usually for one of two things: either they want a selfie or they hand him a beer mat to sign.
On Tuesday, the lanky 69-year-old is set to become postwar Germany’s 10th federal chancellor. It crowns a remarkable political comeback and restarts the clock on an outstanding political promise.
Back in 2003, as finance spokesman for the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin, Merz promised Germans an income tax return simple enough to fit on a beer mat. As one half of a post-Kohl CDU reform duo alongside party leader Angela Merkel, the Merz beer mat tax return symbolised a promise: to hack away the bureaucracy and inertia they saw choking German business, potential and prosperity.
The reform never happened. First Merkel sidelined the ambitious Merz. In 2005, after barely scraping into power with her reform agenda, Merkel recalibrated herself as a centrist mother-of-the-nation. The beer mat ended up in a museum and the conservative-liberal Merz, frustrated as a backbencher, quit politics in 2009. After becoming a millionaire as a lawyer and lobbyist, he secured his comeback as CDU leader – on the third attempt – and only after Merkel departed the political stage in 2021.
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On the campaign trail in last February’s snap election, Merz found that his own lingering resentment towards Merkel chimed with the frustration of a significant number of CDU voters, many of whom blamed her centrist approach for unresolved problems in migration, welfare and the economy.
With that in mind, Merz has revived his party’s conservative-liberal profile and, on the campaign trail, promised voters a CDU in power “that adopts clear positions once more”. His long-term aim: to win back protest voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), people who he describes as “disappointed, frustrated and fed up with what’s been happening in Berlin for years”.
In the Merz inner circle, February’s election victory is a sign of the times and confirmation of their strategy’s success. “Merz appeals to the people who feel steamrollered by modern life,” says a conservative-liberal CDU official, “he gives them a sense of order again”.
Order has long been a priority for Merz, born in the small town of Brilon in the western Sauerland region. Yet his Catholic family biography holds many of the contradictions of 20th-century Germany: a maternal grandfather who was a card-carrying Nazi party member; a father whose family fled from lost eastern territories and who, later as a judge, oversaw many postwar “denazification” trials.
Merz’s life throws up contradictions of its own. He quietly joined the buttoned-down CDU aged 17 during a spell as a long-haired Rolling Stones fan. A decade later, aged 26, he married his long-term girlfriend Charlotte with whom he has a son and two daughters. After studying law, Merz discovered a passion for politics and entered, first, the European Parliament in 1989 and the Bundestag five years later.
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After run-ins with CDU leader and chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merz found a more amenable mentor in Wolfgang Schäuble. His death in 2023 robbed Merz of “the closest friend and adviser that I ever had in politics”.
It was Schäuble who urged Merz to return to claim the leadership crown and shape a post-Merkel CDU. Ambivalent CDU centrists fear the return to power via Merz’s conservative restoration is a slide back to a pre-Merkel CDU. “Say what you want about Merkel,” said one recently retired CDU politician, “but she made ours a party that my daughter voted for.” The politician hasn’t asked his daughter if she voted CDU last February.
A result of 28.5 per cent and election night smiles cannot conceal how Merz has secured power with the second-worst result in CDU history. Some attribute the relatively weak showing to how Merz finished the election a long way from where he started it: with an economic “Agenda 2030” plan to end three years of recession with cuts to taxes and red tape, boost R & D investment, loosen climate regulations and cut welfare.
In January, Merz threw out the economic focus, days after an Afghan-born asylum seeker fatally stabbed a toddler and an adult in Bavaria. Three weeks to polling day, the CDU leader instead launched a parliamentary push for tougher border controls and asylum rules. Unable to secure mainstream political backing, Merz allowed the largely symbolic measures pass the Bundestag with AfD support – shattering a postwar taboo.
While political rivals warned the CDU leader had “opened the door to hell”, Merz insists his party’s self-imposed “firewall” to the AfD remains intact. Not everyone is convinced. One reason cited is an issue that recurs often in conversations about Merz: “impulse control”.
While Angela Merkel was the queen of impulse control – always waiting until the last minute before reacting – Merz is known for impulsive shifts and rhetorical sharpshooting. Critics attribute his sharp tongue to a fragile male ego and a lawyer’s brain trained in black-and-white thinking.
Loyal CDU officials and supporters see in Merz a sharp, analytical intellect and rhetorical gift. He may create more clean-up work for them, they say, but his approach is more in tune with the times. “Merz is an emotional person and he shows it,” says one CDU aide, “rather than drift through, controlled and emotionless.” It remains to be seen, though, whether the emotional, polarising Merz remains intact or a softer figure emerges as chancellor.
Forecasts are difficult given Merz, despite his age and lengthy political career, has never before held public office. When he opens his first cabinet meeting as chancellor, Germany’s oldest elected leader since Konrad Adenauer, it will be his first ever cabinet meeting. Around the Merz cabinet table, 10 centre-right CDU/CSU allies of a conservative-liberal hue will face seven ministers from the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The smaller centre-left party had a disastrous election, yet, as the CDU’s only coalition prospect, secured the influential finance ministry as well as a landmark agreement to borrow at least €1 trillion to invest in Germany’s creaking infrastructure and defence capabilities.
That move was welcomed by many as overdue yet many Merz CDU conservative backers see it has a betrayal of campaign promises for reform, austerity and balanced budgets. The CDU-SPD coalition agreement contains few clues, beyond tax cuts and investment incentives, of how the incoming Merz administration will revive the stuttering German economic motor.
And though coalition has yet to take office, its parties already disagree over what they agreed on tighter management of migration and asylum. Beyond the huge economic challenges at home, Merz faces huge expectations among Germany’s neighbours after the drift of the outgoing Olaf Scholz era. Merz has promised greater co-ordination of German positions in Brussels, and will travel to Paris and Warsaw next week to co-ordinate on challenges posed by Russia, China and Donald Trump, who has tested Merz’s long-held transatlantic convictions.
Meanwhile Kyiv is waiting to see if Merz makes good on his promises for additional support, in particular cruise missiles and security guarantees. After years presenting himself as Germany’s thwarted liberal-conservative genius, nothing stands any longer in the way of Friedrich Merz and his grand plans – except political reality and himself.
Even Angela Merkel seems curious as to what will happen next. After years of avoiding Merz, making a considerable effort to block his leadership bid, the ex-chancellor has announced she will attend Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony. Asked last year about her ally-turned-rival, Merkel delivered a pitch-perfect put-down: “To be chancellor you must have an absolute will for power – and Friedrich Merz has that.”
