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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
78 April-May 2025
April-May 2025 PB
Merz reverts
Friedrich Merz is back, as Chancellor, with a budget, to
lead Europe and close borders to irregular immigrants
By Orlaith Doyle
J
ust 18% of Germans believed the
country was on the right path before
the federal election on 23 February,
which drew the highest turnout since
reunification at 83%. Germany,
accounting for roughly a quarter of the European
Union’s economic output, has been in recession
for two years, with a third looming. Once a pillar
of European prosperity, its economic model —
reliant on industrial exports, particularly to
China, cheap gas from Russia, and security
guarantees from the United States — has
collapsed. Its hope that deepening trade links
with Russia and others would safeguard peace
and prosperity is now in ruins.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), summed up the
situation starkly: “The business model of this
country is gone”, he told The Economist before
the election. Industrial giants such as Bosch
and ThyssenKrupp are cutting jobs, while
Mercedes-Benz announced a 28% decline in
net profits for 2023, down to €10.4 billion, with
revenues also falling by 4%. The company aims
to cut production costs by 10% by 2027.
Germany’s manufacturing sector faces sti
competition from highly ecient Chinese
producers, particularly in electric vehicles, and
increasing taris from the volatile United
States.
At the same time, public confidence in the
coalition SPD-Green-FDP government crumbled
due to a series of violent attacks by asylum
seekers, some of whom had evaded
deportation. Many still blame the migration
policies of former CDU leader, Angela Merkel.
The election results reflected this deep
dissatisfaction:
•
CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/
Christian Social Union): 28.5%
• AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Far Right):
20.8%
• SPD (Social Democratic Party): 16.4%
• Alliance 90/The Greens: 11.6%
• The Left (Die Linke): 8.8%
•
Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (Left
Conser vatives): 7.6%
• FDP (Free Democratic Party, Liberals): 4.3%
Merz’s political journey has been
vicissitudinous. His grandfather, Josef Paul
Johannes Merz, was the mayor of Brilon, his
hometown in North Rhine-Westphalia. Put
down a year and eventually expelled from his
Jesuit school for unclear reasons, he studied
law and rose to lead the CDU’s parliamentary
group but was ousted by Merkel, forcing him
into a lucrative career as a lawyer and lobbyist.
When he returned to politics in 2018 after
earning up to €1 million per year as chairman
of BlackRock Germany, he pledged to counter
the rise of the far-right AfD by shifting the CDU
further to the right on key issues like migration.
His plans include permanent border closures
for “irregular” migration, which could violate
the Schengen Agreement and hastening
deportations of rejected asylum seekers.
However, this strategy did not staunch the AfD
surging to over 20% in the election, and first
place in the economically weaker eastern
regions.
“This is really the last warning to the political
parties of the democratic centre in Germany to
come to joint solutions”, Merz said after the
election. He has suggested the SPD might
support his proposed migration reforms, which
align closely with CDU/CSU policies and have
already been controversially backed by the AfD.
Merz is seeking coalition with the SPD,
probably led by the wildly popular Boris
Pistorius.
His critics highlight his lack of executive
experience – he has never held a ministerial
post nor managed a large organisation outside
the CDU’s parliamentary caucus. His private-
sector tenure was largely advisory rather than
managerial.
He presents himself as a champion of free
markets, liberalised trade, and the transatlantic
alliance. Since the election he has become
dramatically more flexible on expenditure,
particularly defence. On 4 March he announced
that both the CDU and the SPD would propose
“a special fund of €500 billion for the next 10
years for economic development, and also
exempt defence spending from the
constitutional ‘debt brake’, all before the new
Parliament which would veto it, is constituted.
The Economist went weak at the knees: ‘He just
transformed his country with a stroke of
commendable boldness”.
Faced by the threat of rupture with the US,
defence spending will increase to 3% or even
3.5% of GDP. Merz intends to allocate an extra
€3bn “o-budget” to Ukraine. He believes
Germany’s European partners want a stronger
German voice and has even floated the idea of
a European nuclear umbrella independent of
the US. He seems likely to support a return to
conscription.
Though a beanpole, Merz is two inches taller
than Trump which will matter to both men when
they get around to discussing what Merz
described as the “epochal rupture” in relations
between the countries, in the Oval oce.
His political style has drawn mixed reviews.
The New York Times describes him as “assertive
and direct, if a bit awkward”. while The
Economist characterised him as “timid” and
“unserious”, at least until he won the election
and “transformed” the country though, even
before that, “he exuded confidence,
intelligence, and an almost unnerving
composure given the gravity of the moment”.
In his spare time Merz has written several
novels and is keenly religious. His wife
Charlotte, a judge, says she rarely sees him now
except on tv but nevertheless loves him “as if
he were a perfect work of art”.
Merz aims to form a government by Easter
(20–21 April).
Now-Chncellor Friedrich Merz ssils
AfD’s Alice Weidel becuse “Germny is not
neutrl between Ukrine nd Russi, it is for
Ukrine”, wtched by SPD leder Scholz nd
Greens’ Robert Hbeck in four-wy debte,
16 Februry
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