Friedrich Merz: conservative in customs, liberal in economics

The most likely new Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, born in Brilon in 1955, is a former judge and corporate lawyer who gave up that role in 1989 to dedicate himself to politics, although his training in this field began in 1972, when he joined the Young Union – a joint youth organisation between the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU. In 1989, he was elected to the European Parliament. He served only one term there, after which he chose to return to domestic politics as a member of the Bundestag (Parliament). He specialised in financial policy, which earned him a valuable reputation, since economic issues are important to Germans.

In 2000, he was elected chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, exactly the same year that Angela Merkel was elected chairman of the CDU – but Merz was much more of an opponent than a supporter of the woman who would become one of the most important chancellors of post-war Germany. It is since then, for two long decades, that Merz has 'dreamed' of conquering internal power in the Christian Democratic party. A kind of second way that was not successful when Merkel gave up (in 2018) the party chairmanship (she was replaced by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who gave up in 2020 because her party broke, in Thuringia, the 'cordon sanitaire' against the right-wing extremists of the Alternative for Germany, AfD). The also former Defense Minister was replaced by Armin Laschet, who did not survive the 2021 electoral defeat against the still Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In other words: Merz has a much higher level of patience than average – but he cannot be ‘accused’ of being a ‘follower’ of Merkel, with whom he had a covertly stormy relationship – to the point of leaving politics full-time and returning to law. In his new life, the fact that he was an advisor at BlackRock Germany, one of those funds that someone maliciously started calling ‘vultures’, stands out.

He would only return to Parliament in 2021, precisely when his party returned, some 16 years later, to opposition status. And this time he succeeded: he was elected president of the party in December 2021.

Defining himself as anti-communist, conservative in morals and liberal in economics, Merz was president of the Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge) association, a private organisation founded in Hamburg in 1952, whose aim is to promote political understanding between Germany and the United States (and NATO) and which, through a programme called 'Young Leaders', aims to bring military officers, journalists and students of high potential to the 'cause'. Angela Merkel herself and the late Henry Kissinger are on the list of members. But it was not this connection that prevented Merz from being very critical of the position of US President Donald Trump regarding Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky. To all intents and purposes, Merz considers himself deeply committed to the European project, advocating an even more federalised Union and an army for Europe.

It should also be noted that Merz – who, when he was born, went to live in a mansion that belonged to his parents – is a multimillionaire and pilot, with two private planes.

What it advocates: asylum, migration and integration

Merz says he sees limiting irregular migration as the most important task after Sunday's election - and blames Angela Merkel's open borders policy as a "sin" that should never have happened. He believes Germany can still take in 60,000 to 100,000 migrants without reaching saturation point.

The future chancellor is a liberal in terms of social policies: he wants to end unemployment benefits and replace the German social edifice (which Bismarck has been laboriously building since the 19th century) with something he called New Basic Security and which the unions (or some of them) have already characterized as “inhumane and unconstitutional”.

As for the rest, Merz’s proposals for the economic front are not groundbreaking – the Germans are considered to be not very sensitive to political innovation – but they draw on all the liberal resources available: he promises to reduce corporate taxes from 29.9% to 25%; eliminate the controversial Supply Chain Act (which aims to protect human rights in international supply chains); reduce income taxes for workers in the middle and lower income brackets – but at the same time he wants to modernise labour laws to make them more flexible; reverse some of the regulations focused on climate change (including the abolition of the Energy for Buildings Act, which requires owners to replace oil and gas heating); bring nuclear energy (which his predecessor Angela Merkel put an end to) back into the federal framework of options, by investing in small modular reactors; and build power plants.

On the European front, the Christian Democrat leader continues, for now, to be against the creation of common mechanisms for financing spending on defense and security and seems little interested in placing the 'German treasury' at the service of countries that do not meet their macro obligations in terms of deficits and debts.