Friedrich Merz took to the podium at the Chancellery in Berlin last week to announce the first installment of a comprehensive overhaul of Germany’s social system that he hopes will demonstrate his vision to move the country forward.
Instead, he faced questions about how much longer his coalition will last.
“Nobody can make guarantees about anything,” Merz responded.
Merz entered office one year ago pledging to kickstart Germany’s economy, restore the country’s leadership in Europe and build trust in democratic institutions as a bulwark against the rising tide of the far right. The embattled chancellor is now struggling on all those fronts.
A recovery has been derailed by Donald Trump’s war in Iran, with Europe on the sidelines. Merz’s public standing has plummeted, opening a path for Germany’s anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany to vault ahead in several polls. The past week has brought a high-profile feud with the US president, who has threatened more tariffs on carmakers and cuts to US troop levels in Germany.
The turmoil is giving rise to speculation among government officials and those within the chancellor’s Christian Democratic-led bloc about how much longer Merz’s chancellorship can last, according to people familiar with the coalition dynamics.
One CDU official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the 70-year-old is cutting a tragic figure — finally attaining the high office he’d sought since before Angela Merkel sidelined him almost a quarter century ago, and yet has been caught out by the challenges it poses.
“No federal chancellor before me has had to endure anything like this,” Merz told Der Spiegel magazine in an interview last month. The remark referred to social media attacks, but it was widely panned in the German public as a form of self-pity.
As he tries to marshal an agenda that he says will revive Europe’s No. 1 economy, he’s instead presided over an unwieldy alliance with his party’s political rivals and a prolonged economic malaise. His government cut its growth forecast for this year in half last month, citing a “highly volatile” global environment.
The one-time board member of BlackRock Inc. in Germany, who left the political world for over a decade, has been dogged by accusations of his impulsiveness and lack of patience for often time-consuming political compromise.
Merz’s authority was put to the test at an early-April meeting of party leaders at a villa at the edge of Berlin, during which he lashed out at Lars Klingbeil, the Social Democratic vice chancellor, according to an official familiar with the encounter.
Asked about the spat during his health-reform briefing, Merz retorted: “I want to make one thing clear — I don’t yell at anyone.”
But the coalition parties, which had been haggling over a policy response to surging fuel prices, were unable to agree on most of the options under discussion, according to an official familiar with the gathering. After a full weekend of deadlock, leaders decided to put forward a 17-cent-per-liter fuel tax cut and an optional employee bonus to save face, the person said, adding that the meeting was roundly viewed as a disaster.
It’s been a baptism by fire for a chancellor who had promised a government free of the internal conflicts that brought down his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. He once disparaged Scholz as someone who wielded the job’s power like a “plumber.”
He also made no secret that he felt he was better qualified than Merkel, who ousted him from the parliamentary caucus leadership in 2002 before she won the top job three years later.
But those qualifications are being put to the test. At a cabinet session earlier this year, Merz took issue with the €8 billion ($9.4 billion) price tag of a set of carbon-reduction measures, triggering a sharp exchange with his SPD environment minister, Carsten Schneider, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Klingbeil, the finance minister, intervened, explaining that the measure was part of a package that had already been agreed on by coalition partners, and the matter was resolved. But questions about Merz’s leadership — and grasp of policy details — lingered, the officials said.
Geopolitical shifts have also put to the test the chancellor’s world view, a pro-NATO, transatlantic orientation forged in post-World War II West Germany.
The exasperation was on display at a school visit in his constituency last week, when Merz told students that the US was being “humiliated” by Iranian negotiators. Although the chancellor had become critical about Trump’s campaign over a lack of strategic vision, the comments were unusually candid for a German leader.
It was a genuine expression of Merz’s growing concern about the conflict’s impact on Germany’s economy, according to an official familiar with the chancellor’s thinking. But Trump responded by attacking Merz — and then announcing that the US would withdraw more than 5,000 troops from Germany.
Merz isn’t the only European leader at a loss over how to navigate Trump’s presidency. But the break between the two men marked the collapse of his initial overtures to the US leader, including a chummy Oval Office meeting in March. The schoolhouse remarks also irked some within the CDU, particularly given the potential for fallout, according to a party official.
Merz has signaled that he’s aware of the political peril he faces. “I of course take the dissatisfaction seriously,” he said on a much-watched political talk show late Sunday. The best path forward is to press ahead on reforms, including an overhaul of Germany’s income tax and pension systems in addition to healthcare, he’s said.
The chancellor touted his health measures as one of the biggest social reforms of the past few decades. It “should have been done 10 years ago,” he said, a clear swipe at Merkel.
But aside from hardening hostility from the right late in her tenure, one thing Merkel never lacked was relatively broad public acceptance. Merz’s personal popularity, never high, has tanked. In mid-April, his backing dropped eight points to 21%, while dissatisfaction climbed to 76%, according to an ARD Deutschlandtrend survey.
The turmoil has been a tailwind for the AfD, a party that calls for strict limits to immigration and large-scale deportations — and that’s under scrutiny by domestic intelligence for positions that marginalize minorities and champion an ethnocentric view of national identity. The AfD polled at 27.5%, ahead of the CDU-led bloc with 24% and more than double the SPD’s 13.5% backing, according to a national poll carried out by Forsa.
The far-right party is polling at close to 40% in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, which holds an election on Sept. 6 that could hand the AfD an absolute majority in the regional parliament. The contest is shaping up to be major test for whether the center will hold under Merz.
But his appearance at a town hall meeting in the region last week shows how difficult that will be. In the town of Salzwedel on Thursday, the chancellor was confronted by a woman who said she had terminal cancer. Upbraiding him for service cuts, she pointedly invited him to her funeral — and asked why he had sought a pay raise.
Advisers watching knew it would be difficult to navigate such a personal moment, according to a person familiar with their thinking. But if Merz had an opportunity to show sympathy, he missed it. Instead, he told her that she was wrong on her final point.
“At no point,” Merz said, bristling, “at no point has anyone considered increasing the pay of members of the federal government.”