Friedrich Merz is one day older than the German army but when both turned 70 earlier this month, most agreed that the lanky chancellor is in far better shape. After six months in office, however, ongoing domestic challenges and a pushy political partner have some wondering how long Merz’s condition will last.
In his rural hometown of Brilon, a hilly place of half-timbered houses in western Germany’s Sauerland region, the Merz goodwill tank is still amply full. But even close friends and allies in Merzland admit the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chancellor is in a bind. Retired local councillor Karl Schneider says Merz, a friend for 50 years, is a decisive man and the right leader to end six years of German economic stagnation.
“But it’s not a given that he can lead as he would like, or find the political strength to implement the policies needed for growth,” admits Schneider.
He has watched Merz rise from long-haired teen to law student and fresh-faced MEP in 1989. A decade later, Merz served as number two to Angela Merkel in the post-Helmut Kohl CDU. The two fell out, he left politics for finance but returned to become CDU leader on the third attempt.
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Merz won power at the first time of asking in February, when 28.5 per cent of votes went to the CDU in the federal elections.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) finished 12 points behind but, knowing it is his only viable political partner, it has proven a demanding junior coalition member for Merz.
First came a post-election U-turn to back a gigantic debt-financed investment programme. Now the chancellor is trapped between the SPD and his own party in an ugly pension reform row.
“The SPD have him on a leash, but they are not the reason people voted for him,” says one local CDU grandee in Brilon. “We badly need an alternative to that.”
Merz’s only arithmetic alternative in government, however, is a political taboo: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The AfD doesn’t sit in Brilon town council, but in last February’s federal election it more than doubled its federal support in the Sauerland region to 16 per cent. At national level, polls put it beside, or just behind, the CDU on 25/26 per cent.
After six months, the CDU here in Merzland is divided over what to do now. Grit their teeth with the SPD? Or dump them for an untested minority administration that accepts opposition support – including from the AfD if need be – to cut bureaucracy, boost the business outlook and tighten migration?
“The right issue doesn’t become wrong just because the AfD supports it,” says Wolf Walter Hustadt, a self-professed Merz admirer and chief executive of Briloner Leuchten, a local lighting company that employs 260 people.
No fan of extremist parties, Hustadt is equally alarmed at how the SPD is “leading his CDU around with a ring through its nose”.
“My big fear if this coalition falls apart, is that it won’t be possible to put together a new one from the democratic centre,” he says.
That centre is shrinking at speed. While the first Merkel-led grand coalition of CDU and SPD 20 years ago commanded 73 per cent of Bundestag seats, the same alliance holds 45 per cent of seats now.
A second pressure point, in Sauerland and around the country, is Germany’s so-called Mittelstand, its economic backbone of small- and medium-sized enterprises.
“Our member firms say they are up to their neck in it,” says Stefan Severin, spokesman for the chamber of industry and commerce, in advance of a planned Sauerland members’ meeting with the chancellor on Friday evening. “Everyone values Merz and knows he is clued-in on business, now he just has to deliver.”
Like a siren, a senior AfD leader suggested this week that an unofficial co-operation would help Merz deliver a “liberation for the CDU and for Germany”.
Merz is hedging his bets. He accuses the AfD of “wanting to destroy” his party, yet he also dismisses as “not my language” the self-imposed CDU “firewall” against far right co-operation.
A minority government is, the chancellor said, “ruled out, from my perspective”.
“Does anyone seriously think we could work with varying majorities in the Bundestag with serious legislative work?” he asked a Berlin event. “With respect, that’s not thought through to the end. We’ve never had that in Germany.”
This weekend Merz will be back in Brilon as usual to visit his parents – both over 100 – in a local care home. Afterwards, his allies and friends say they will repeat their common wish: that Merz turn the tables on the SPD, expedite economic reform, slash red tape and explore untested political options.
In Brilon town hall, Social Democrat mayor Christof Bartsch says he doesn’t envy the interlinked challenges Merz inherited: climate protection and energy challenges, war and migration. Six months in, Bartsch suggests that the typical Sauerland character traits chancellor Merz has retained – of dependability and directness – can be both a political help and hindrance.
“Merz will do things of which he is convinced without trying to please everyone – which never works anyway,” says Bartsch. “His clear way of speaking is unusual for a politician, though, and could yet land him in it.”
