Who is Friedrich Merz, Germany's likely next chancellor?

Friedrich Merz, chairman of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is set to become Germany's next chancellor based on the projections of Germany's general election, held on February 23.

His center-right bloc (CDU/CSU) had long been leading comfortably, sitting in opinion polls at around 30%, and Merz had been acknowledged as the main challenger to sitting chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

His election victory this weekend completes a remarkable return for Merz, who only rejoined the Bundestag in 2021 after a 12-year hiatus from politics.

The 69-year-old will 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. 

He did this recently, at the final party conference in late January ahead of this election, triggering a political storm 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.

However Merz apparently saw his move as a gamble aimed at curbing the success of the anti-immigration AfD.

Merz was often thought as Merkel's rival in the early 2000s. In 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 sharp speaker. What he said in the parliamentary group carried weight.

Merz's exit from politics was followed by his 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 chairperson 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 voted against liberalizing abortion laws and against pre-implantation genetic diagnosis 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 should be a "dominant guiding culture" in Germany.

He is now bringing some of these issues up again — but 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 for its racist overtones. However there wasn't much criticism coming from the top of the CDU. After the end of the Merkel years, many of the former chancellor's political companions left. Additionally since last summer Merz has found himself having to correct and defend some of his own statements.

A more conservative party

On the Berlin stage, Merz claims that the CDU parliamentary group has found a new course in key areas. He has "also initiated, driven forward and completed this process in the CDU with the new basic program," he argues, which "puts us back on track."

Merz now stands for a CDU that has become much more conservative, even though his own positions have changed little in the last 20 years. 

In November, following the collapse of Scholz's coalition government, an alliance between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, Merz described the "coalition as "history." 

"The traffic light did not fail because of the FDP alone," he said at the time, "but because of the lack of a common basis for a government alliance from the very beginning."

'The left is over'

But Merz and the CDU and CSU may now have to deal with the same problem: Who it is that they can form a coalition government with?

Merz has ruled out a coalition with the far-right AfD several times now since early January. But on Saturday, just hours before the election, he also doubled down on criticism of other major German political parties. In Munich to end the election campaign, in a vehement final speech, Merz argued that "the left is over. There is no longer a left-wing majority and no more left-wing politics in Germany."

He also lashed out at Saturday's protests against far-right extremism and said that if he won, he would be conducting politics for the German majority "who think straight" and not "for any green or left-wing nutcases in this world."

Unsurprisingly leaders of the center-left Social Democratic Party were not pleased.

"Friedrich Merz is deepening the divisions in the democratic center of our country in the final stages of the election campaign," SPD leader Lars Klingbeil wrote in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

"That is not how someone who wants to be chancellor for everyone speaks," the SPD's General Secretary Matthias Miersch told news agency dpa. "That is how a mini-Trump speaks."

Before the elections, the SPD was widely expected to be the Christian Democrats' most likely coalition partner in the next German government.