Merz has outlined a conservative vision for how he’ll govern. He plans to cut welfare benefits, sharply reduce the number of asylum seekers coming to Germany, cut regulations to incentivize more private investment, and make military spending a higher budget priority while maintaining fiscal discipline.
But it’s unclear whether those policies, even if realized, would suffice to meet the monumental challenges Germany now faces.
The end of the Merkel era
Merz’s core mission is to undo the legacy of Angela Merkel, his CDU predecessor who served as chancellor for 16 years.
After winning a party power struggle with Merz back in 2002, Merkel effectively exiled him from the CDU leadership. After years on the political sidelines, Merz left the German parliament to go into business, eventually chairing the German arm of U.S. investment fund BlackRock.
But as Merkel drew the CDU toward the center and allowed over a million asylum seekers to enter Germany during the refugee crisis of 2015, Merz and other hard-right conservatives quietly stewed. Merkel’s centrism, they believed, had opened up room on Germany’s political spectrum for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — currently the second strongest party in the country, according to polls.
Shortly after the 2021 election that brought Chancellor Olaf Scholz to power, CDU members overwhelmingly elected Merz to lead the party, cementing his political comeback and drawing the party back to the right.