\u201cMr. Merz, we believed in your political leadership. We trusted you. And we have fought for you,\u201d the letter read. \u201cBut we are now asking the question: for what? For a CDU that submits to the left-wing mainstream?\u201d<\/p>\n
After years of weak, divided government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, many European leaders had hoped Merz would provide stronger German leadership within the European Union. Merz too has vowed to provide that leadership in light of the challenges posed by U.S. President Donald Trump, vowing after his victory in the Feb. 23 snap election \u201cto strengthen Europe<\/a> as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n But Merz\u2019s recent political difficulties have left him injured, a weakened leader who may have to spend more time attempting to repair his damaged image at home. Already Germany\u2019s conservative bloc is dropping in the polls while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) \u2014 set to become Germany\u2019s biggest opposition party when the new Bundestag convenes \u2014 is benefiting from the incoming chancellor\u2019s new vulnerability.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s latest benchmark Deutschlandtrend poll<\/a> shows support for Merz\u2019s conservative bloc dropping three percentage points to 26 percent and the AfD gaining by the same margin to reach 24 percent support, its strongest-ever result. Perhaps even more concerning for Merz, only 25 percent of Germans approve of his performance, down 10 percentage points from February, when the conservatives won the national election.<\/p>\n Merz\u2019s recent political problems began when he reached a historic agreement<\/a> with the SPD and the Greens to unleash as much as \u20ac1 trillion in new spending for defense and infrastructure over the next decade, including \u20ac100 billion for Germany\u2019s green transition. While Germany\u2019s dramatic move to reverse more than 15 years\u00a0of self-imposed austerity drew approval abroad, many domestic conservatives quietly smarted, believing that Merz \u2014\u00a0who had preached a conservative gospel of fiscal discipline<\/a> ahead of the election \u2014 had given his center-left opponents the debt-fueled spending they\u2019d long advocated.<\/p>\n The move also opened him up to fierce attacks from the AfD, whose leaders accused Merz of betraying his own voters. \u201cWhat do you actually stand for, Mr. Merz?\u201d one of the AfD\u2019s leaders, Tino Chrupalla, asked in parliament. \u201cBy now, you have the mRNA of the SPD implanted in you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMr. Merz, we believed in your political leadership. We trusted you. And we have fought for you,\u201d the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1945,7336,11070,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-18433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-friedrich-merz","11":"tag-german-election-2025","12":"tag-german-politics","13":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114334689186391281","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}