Friedrich Merz didn’t waste time.
Having led his party, the Christian Democrats, to first place in Germany’s election last month, Mr. Merz swiftly assumed the mantle of chancellor-in-waiting. He urged the country to move quickly to address the challenges, both domestic and foreign, that threaten to overwhelm it. “The world,” he said, “is not waiting for us.”
He’s not wrong. Germany needs to get its act together, fast. The far-right Alternative for Germany, exploiting a shrinking economy and a widespread sense of malaise, came in second, winning 20 percent of the vote. The extreme right is now the strongest it has been since the end of World War II. President Trump’s rapprochement with Russia and castigation of Europe, meanwhile, threatens to upend the international order and Germany’s place in it. In the face of both tests, the country must at once renew and reorient itself.
The task calls for a leader with a fresh vision of the future. Unfortunately, that’s not Mr. Merz. Committed to tax breaks for the wealthy, harsh restrictions for migrants and cuts for welfare recipients, he is a throwback figure. His program amounts to an effort to turn back the clock to a time when the country could depend on cheap energy and plentiful exports to propel it on the world stage. Today, Germany is in urgent need of change. Instead it’s getting Mr. Merz: yesterday’s man, with yesterday’s ideas.
Born in 1955, Mr. Merz grew up in a Catholic family in the Sauerland, a staunchly conservative region in western Germany. As a teenager, he thought the ’68 generation of leftist activists were “crazy.” He worried, too, that the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany would make it into Parliament. By the time he joined the Christian Democrats’ youth organization at age 17, it was clear politics was his future. In 1989, after law school and a spell in the profession, he was elected to the European Parliament; five years later, he sat in the German Parliament.
He enjoyed a steady rise there, notably popularizing the concept of Leitkultur, a set of norms to which every immigrant should submit. But the top prize was blocked by his longstanding rival, Angela Merkel. After losing the leadership to her in a bitter power struggle in the early 2000s, he gradually shifted into the private sector, amassing a sizable fortune in the process. But Ms. Merkel’s departure from the party leadership gave him a chance at a comeback. On his third attempt, promising a much tougher line on crime and migration, he finally took control of the party in early 2022.
His tenure has been uneven. Jutta Falke-Ischinger, a co-author of an unofficial biography of Mr. Merz, describes him as someone who lacks “impulse control,” and it’s possible to see that waywardness in his leadership. He has made headlines with insults to minority groups, including Ukrainian refugees and Muslim children, resulting in more than one public apology. His sometimes absurd, baseless comments — claiming, for example, that rejected asylum seekers were taking all of the country’s dental appointments, leaving none for Germans — suggest someone happy to play into right-wing talking points.
His biggest gamble, however, came during the election campaign. In January, after an asylum seeker stabbed several people in Bavaria, killing two, Mr. Merz brought a draconian anti-migrant proposal to Parliament, relying on votes from Alternative for Germany to pass it. This collaboration not only broke his own promise not to work with the party but also shattered the postwar firewall blocking the far right. Criticism was loud and immediate. Coming when he was cruising toward victory, it seemed like a strange step.
Since then, Mr. Merz has cast himself as a bulwark against autocracy, shielding Europe from the authoritarian depredations of America and Russia alike. There is no imposture here: An old-school institutionalist and lifelong trans-Atlanticist, Mr. Merz strongly believes in both the European Union and NATO. For him, German support for Ukraine is not up for debate and the emerging alliance between America and Russia is an indefensible affront. On election night, he said that Europe — where it was “five minutes to midnight” — must prepare to become independent from the United States.
These are strong words, to be sure. But it’s a move Germany has seen before. In the early 2000s, then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder also distanced the country from America, in that case over its war in Iraq, and energetically drove European integration. That’s not all Mr. Merz has borrowed from Mr. Schröder. His set of proposals, labeled Agenda 2030, bears more than a passing resemblance to a series of reforms enacted by the Schröder government, known as Agenda 2010. As with those earlier policies, the focus is on reducing social security payments, cutting regulations for companies and offering tax breaks to corporations. The aim, Mr. Merz has said, is to “restore the competitiveness of this country.”
The problem is that the conditions for Germany’s past competitive edge — cheap Russian gas, a huge low-wage sector and booming exports — no longer exist. There are things Mr. Merz could do to recharge the economy: back renewable energy; make targeted investments in public infrastructure, the care sector and technology; and, above all, bring about a comprehensive investment push. But he remains committed to Germany’s debt brake, which ensures strict limits on spending, and refuses to tax large fortunes and inheritances more heavily. The result is a program both inadequate and underfunded.
It’s not just the economy Mr. Merz would like to take back to the past. He plans to undo the few moderate social reforms of the previous government — for example, on cannabis legalization and legislation enabling easier gender self-identification — and to intensify the hostile environment for migrants. He won’t entirely get his own way, of course. He’s likely to form a coalition with the Social Democrats, another throwback to the so-called grand coalitions that dominated the country’s politics for much of the Merkel era. How much they challenge him is another question.
In many ways, Mr. Merz embodies the dilemma of contemporary conservatism. He maintains a professed opposition to far-right parties and autocratic regimes while engaging in the anti-migrant fearmongering favored by the far right. He wants to restore a bygone social and economic order but refuses to countenance the progressive reforms that might achieve a better settlement. The Christian Democrats’ campaign slogan was “forward again.” But under Mr. Merz, they’re just looking backward.
The post Germany Needs to Get Its Act Together. Under Him, It Won’t. appeared first on New York Times.
