CDU leader Friedrich Merz wants the chancellery

Friedrich Merz , chairman of the conservative Chistian Democratic Union (CDU), believes he is set to become Germany's next chancellor after the general election on February 23.

At the final party conference ahead of the vote he demonstrated confidence in the face of a political storm he triggered in late January when he attempted to pass a tough immigration bill through parliament with the help of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

This move triggered shock waves throughout the country, with protesters decrying the collaboration as an unprecedented violation of the post-war taboo of cooperating with the far right.

Merz himself sees his move as a gamble aimed at curbing the success of the anti-immigration AfD.

His center-right bloc (CDU/CSU) has long been leading comfortably in opinion polls at around 30%, making Merz the main challenger to Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

An election victory would complete a remarkable return for Merz, who only rejoined the Bundestag in 2021 after a 12-year hiatus from politics.

If elected, the 69-year-old would be the oldest chancellor since Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the new Federal Republic of Germany, who took office in 1949 at the age of 73.

Scholz and Merz are both trained lawyers, but the resemblance ends there. The tall CDU politician is an imposing figure, whether he is entering a room or taking to the stage. In person, he comes across as approachable and even humorous, though he doesn't always make the best impression when he leans down to talk to people, as he often does.

Out of politics and into business

When Angela Merkel rose to lead the CDU parliamentary group in 2002 and entered the chancellery in 2005, the much more conservative-minded Merz withdrew and stayed away from politics for years.

Compared with Merkel, who was seen as a calm and calculating tactician, Merz is viewed as a very different kind of politician, much more willing to take political risks. 

Merz was often thought as Merkel's rival in the early 2000s. As late as 2001, he put himself forward as the chancellor candidate for the 2002 federal election. But at the time, the CDU chose the Bavarian CSU politician Edmund Stoiber, who ran against the Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder — and lost. Merz gradually moved away from the political arena, and returned to his work as a lawyer. In 2009, he no longer stood as a candidate for the Bundestag.

Merz hails from the Sauerland — a region of low mountains in western Germany — and is both a Catholic and a lawyer, like his father before him. To this day, he lives not far from the place where he was born. In 1989, at the age of 33, he became a member of the European Parliament for the CDU. Five years later, he switched to the Bundestag, and quickly made a name for himself as a good and sharp speaker. What he said in the parliamentary group carried weight.

Merz's exit from politics was followed by a rise in the private sector. From 2005 to 2021, he was part of an international law firm and took on top positions on supervisory and administrative boards. From 2016 to 2020, he was chairman of the supervisory board of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, in Germany.

But when Merkel announced she would be leaving politics in 2021, Merz returned and gradually rose through the ranks once again. The CDU elected him party leader in 2022 on his third attempt. He had a reputation as a liberal economic representative of the conservative CDU wing.

Controversial statements

Merz had already voted against liberalizing abortion laws and against pre-implantation genetic diagnosis in the Bundestag in the 1990s. He also infamously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997.

He was always consistently in favor of nuclear power, and pushed for a more liberal economic policy and a reduction in bureaucracy. Almost 25 years ago, he lamented the effects of German migration policy, spoke of "problems with foreigners" and insisted that there was a "dominant guiding culture" in Germany.

He is now bringing some of these issues up again — with Germany in a very different political and social situation. On the political talk show Markus Lanz in January 2023, he complained about a lack of integration in Germany and argued that there are "people who actually have no business in Germany, who we have tolerated here for a long time, who we do not send back, who we do not deport, and then we are surprised that there are such excesses." Fathers, he said, were denying teachers, especially female teachers, any authority over their children, who he described as "little pashas."

This attracted much controversy at the time, though now you don't hear much contradiction to such statements from the top of the CDU. After the end of the Merkel years, many of the former chancellor's political companions left.

The CDU leader is most likely to face headwinds from the Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). With a strong media presence, their leader Markus Söder — since he lost the race to be chancellor candidate in 2021 — has been pushing Merz, despite frequent expressions of loyalty. Merz has since lost some of his sovereignty since last summer, and found himself having to correct some of his own statements.

On the Berlin stage, however, he has ensured that the parliamentary group has, as he says, redefined its course in key areas of German politics. He has "also initiated, driven forward and completed this process in the CDU with the new basic program." His conclusion: "This puts us back on track."

Merz now stands for a CDU that has become much more conservative, though his own positions have changed little in the last 20 years. He is now considering a return to nuclear power, and in late January attempted to get a more restrictive migration policy through parliament.

In the hours following the collapse of Scholz's coalition between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP in November, Merz said the "traffic light coalition" was already a thing of the past: "The traffic light has been history since last night. The traffic light did not fail because of the FDP alone, but because of the lack of a common basis for a government alliance from the very beginning."

Merz wants to replace Scholz and his minority government, but it remains to be seen which coalition partners he will work with to do so.

This article was originally written in German, and was first published in November 2024 when Friedrich Merz became his party's top candidate. It has since been updated to reflect latest developments.

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