Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spent just six months in office but, at 70, is already three years past Germany’s official retirement age.
And on Friday a tight Bundestag vote – ostensibly about fixing state pension payments – could yet decide just how soon the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader is nudged into political retirement.
Pension policy is hardly the stuff of political thrillers yet Friday’s outcome could make or break not just Merz, but also his parliamentary party leader, Jens Spahn.
In just six months the 45-year-old CDU politician has failed – twice – to deliver parliamentary majorities. In May, Spahn fumbled the vote to back Merz as chancellor, causing uproar in the Bundestag chamber and forcing an unprecedented second round.
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Two months later Spahn failed to secure enough CDU MPs to back a constitutional court candidate nominated by its ruling coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
A compromise was eventually found but the centre-left SPD has been on the war path ever since, making political demands far more ambitious than its 14 per cent in polls.
In particular, its focus is on state pensions, which the SPD wants to fix at 48 per cent of final income until at least 2031.
The SPD’s non-negotiable stance here has prompted a revolt among 18 younger members of the Merz CDU, who say this will shift an additional €100 billion of debt on to already over-burdened younger Germans.
For three weeks, this pension standoff has paralysed political Berlin and morphed into a much bigger battle over what direction the CDU needs to take in power to survive the next federal election – and whether Merz is the man for the job.
The CDU is already down four points since February’s snap election and, far worse, is trailing by 2.5 points the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
CDU conservatives say voters are punishing them – rightly – for failing to deliver on their campaign promises. Instead of radical reform to break Germany’s six-year economic slump, the Merz administration has front-loaded SPD-backed policies on debt-financed investment on infrastructure and higher pensions.
Without a radical correction, CDU right-wingers fear they are on a hiding to nothing at the next election.
One more reason why, in advance of Friday’s vote, all eyes are on Spahn, the most ambitious – and controversial – among the CDU’s younger generation of politicians.
He is juggling a tight, 12-seat Bundestag majority with 18 rebels among the younger CDU parliamentary party. After failing in May and July, Spahn has put the stick about this time – cajoling and threatening rebels to secure their support.
At a test vote on Tuesday evening, many younger CDU MPs – with an eye on their future electoral prospects – fell into line. Yet sources say the parliamentary party was still 10 votes short.
Even senior Merz administration officials are alarmed at how fast the CDU-SPD alliance is burning through its political capital, particularly over a pension row that is only window dressing.
A full pension reform, promised by successive governments in the last 20 years, has been kicked farther down the road by this government until another commission delivers the same warning of Germany’s approaching demographic iceberg.
Today each state pension is co-financed by three working Germans; by 2030 it will be 2:1.
“In every [parliamentary] vote you have to look at what consequences ... voting behaviour will have,” said Spahn on German television, warning that Friday’s vote could “have consequences, with everything drawing to a halt”.
Also warning of consequences is SPD co-leader Barbel Bas. As federal welfare minister, responsible for pension policy, she has made clear that Friday’s vote will decide “the future of the coalition”.
“If it fails there is the danger we will barely get any other legislation we bring through parliament,” she said.
Even if the government survives Friday’s tight vote, the pensions row has drained still further the reserves of a coalition that many doubt will run full term to 2029.
“I will vote in favour on Friday, but that’s it for me,” said Baron Christian von Stetten, 55-year-old CDU MP for Schwabisch Hall in Germany’s southwest. “My trust in our coalition partner is fully exhausted – after 200 days.”
Such attitudes are widespread in the conservative end of the CDU, increasing speculation of a Spahn-led plot for power in the post-Merz era – if necessary in an informal political alliance with the AfD.
That, in turn, has triggered alarms outside the Bundestag given the historical echoes of the 1930s, when German conservatives joined forces with Hitler’s National Socialists.
On Tuesday, with that in mind, leading German agitprop group ZPS erected a life-size bronze statue outside the CDU’s Berlin headquarters of Walter Lubke, a Merz party member shot dead by a far-right extremist in 2019.
“Then as now, the road to fascism leads through the conservative camp,” warned the ZPS. Its founder, Philip Ruch, unveiling the statute, added: “Like many in this country I am watching with horror the CDU cosying up to the extremists.”
