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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has signalled he is open to reshuffling his government as he seeks to fill the vacancy left by CDU parliamentary leader Jens Spahn, who was asked to step down and eventually resigned on Saturday.
Speaking in ZDF’s summer interview, Merz stressed he was speaking “hypothetically”, but said he wants a decision on Spahn’s successor as leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in Germany’s Bundestag by the end of July.
Chancellery Minister Thorsten Frei is widely seen as the frontrunner to replace Spahn, although Merz declined to confirm whether Frei or any other candidate was under consideration.
If Frei were to become parliamentary leader, Merz would also need to appoint a new head of the Chancellery, one of the chancellor’s closest aides responsible for coordinating government policy.
The pressure to resolve the issue quickly is also driven by a series of key state elections in September in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The CDU is facing difficult contests in all three states.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the far-right AfD is hoping to secure its first state premiership, with lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund. The party’s regional branch in the state has been classified by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency as a confirmed far-right extremist organisation.
Spahn has come under particular scrutiny after he and his husband became fathers through surrogacy in the United States, a process that can cost hundreds of thousands of euros. The issue has also reignited debate over Germany’s restrictive surrogacy laws.
Critics on the political left and within the Green party have accused Spahn of hypocrisy as he has repeatedly opposed legalising surrogacy in Germany and has not backed broader reforms to family policy.
Merz said he had not expected the backlash against Spahn to be “to this extent”. Speaking to ZDF, the chancellor said there had been “quite a lot of outrage” directed at the CDU politician and suggested the criticism was “probably also related to him as a person and the way it was communicated”.
Asked whether the controversy risked damaging the CDU/CSU ahead of key regional elections, Merz said: “Over the course of yesterday it became overwhelmingly clear to me, and that is why we acted.”
The affair comes as Merz is facing mounting political pressure of his own. Just two months before a series of important regional elections, only 13% of Germans say they are satisfied with his performance as chancellor, while around five in six are dissatisfied, according to the latest ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll.
The survey also found that no previous German chancellor had recorded lower approval ratings at this stage of their time in office than Merz.