Friedrich Merz | The conservative turn

Friedrich Merz
| Photo Credit: Illustration: Sreejith R. Kumar

While addressing the media after the results of Germany’s Feb. 23 election were out, the leader of the leading conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, Christian Social Union, Friedrich Merz, opined that the staggering rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), with its vote share of almost 20%, is a “real warning bell, a real alarm bell for the political parties”. However, for someone who has strongly ruled out any coalition with the AfD, the about-to-be Chancellor was more than happy to receive support from the AfD, effectively breaking the ‘Brandmauer’ or firewall that political parties have kept with the right-wing post the Second World War, for the motions he raised in the Bundestag in January on restricting immigration and asylum.

Mr. Merz’s tougher stance on immigration has been seen as an attempt to gain some section of right-wing voters, especially in east Germany. In light of a knife attack carried out by an Afghan immigrant in the city of Aschaffenburg on January 22, Mr. Merz had promised that if he became Chancellor, he would “impose permanent border controls with all our neighbours and refuse all attempts at illegal entry”. He stated that the knife attack was evidence of a “failed” immigration system. Mr. Merz was born into an affluent family, with his father also being a member of the CDU. Mr. Merz joined the CDU as a young boy, and was briefly engaged in the military before becoming a lawyer. Keen to make his entry in politics, he was elected to be a member of the CDU’s wing in the European Parliament in 1989. Even though a staunch supporter of the European project and NATO, Mr. Merz saw his future in the Bundestag. After being elected to the German parliament in 1994, Mr. Merz established himself in the CDU as a leading economic policy expert, and was a favourite of the more conservative faction within the CDU.

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However, after the rise to power of CDU stalwart Angela Merkel, Mr. Merz resigned from politics in 2009 and went back to practising corporate law full-time. In the interim, before his return to the CDU in 2018, Mr. Merz served on the board of many multinational companies and trusts. Always staunchly pro-business, Mr. Merz was until recently a strong supporter of the U.S. and trans-Atlantic trade. Under President Donald Trump however, Mr. Merz has stated that the U.S. seems indifferent to Europe’s fate, and that the continent needs to build its own defences without relying on the U.S.

Interestingly, Mr. Merz’s career outside politics has also made him an ‘alleged’ multi-millionaire. Even while in Parliament, he held various secondary postings. In 2005, when a law was passed asking members of the Bundestag to disclose any and all secondary sources of income, Mr. Merz, along with some other members, filed a lawsuit against the order in the Federal Constitutional Court, stating that it would make elected members ‘career politicians’. Mr. Merz is also a licensed pilot, and owns two private jets.

Rivalry with Merkel

Before his exit from politics in 2009, Mr. Merz was considered an up and coming leader of the CDU, and even became the parliamentary leader of the party in 2000. However, his rise to the very top was blocked by the increasing dominance of Ms. Merkel, who was the chairwoman of the CDU at the time. To Ms. Merkel, Mr. Merz was a tad too conservative to be a centrist as she was, and after the party’s electoral defeat in 2002, she removed Mr. Merz from his post as the parliamentary leader. Therefore, it is unsurprising that his return to the party was after Ms. Merkel resigned from the CDU leadership.

After being sidelined by Ms. Merkel, Mr. Merz’s bid for leadership of the CDU was thwarted twice — once in 2018 and the other in January 2021. He was finally elected party leader in December 2021, and has shown himself to be quite a different leader compared to Ms. Merkel — central to this being his vastly different stance on immigration in contrast to Ms. Merkel’s open borders policy.

Apart from a divided polity and an unpredictable U.S. government, Germany’s economic woes are aplenty. The economy, suffering from the phasing out of cheap energy from Russia and the strict ‘debt brake’, needs a major boost, which Mr. Merz has promised to deliver by cutting down expenses on bureaucracy. Additionally, Mr. Merz, who is critical of the Russian regime, has offered all support to Ukraine and for the export of German weapons to the war-torn nation. Mr. Merz is also an avid supporter of Israel, and has said that he will invite the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Germany after he becomes Chancellor in open defiance of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu.