\n\tBERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has driven sweeping changes in security, economic and migration policy during his first 100 days in office, but faces widening cracks in his uneasy coalition.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn election night in February, a jubilant Merz promised to bring a bit of \u201crambo zambo\u201d to the post \u2013 using a colloquialism that can evoke a wild and joyous ride, or chaos and mayhem.<\/p>\n
\n\tHaving achieved his life\u2019s ambition at age 69 to run Europe\u2019s top economy, Merz lost no time to push change, mostly in response to transatlantic turbulence sparked by US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cGermany is back,\u201d Merz said, vowing to revive the economy, the military and Berlin\u2019s international standing after what he labelled three lackluster years under his center-left predecessor Olaf Scholz.<\/p>\n
\n\tEven before taking office, Merz\u2019s Christian Democrats (CDU\/CSU) and their governing partners from Scholz\u2019s Social Democratic party (SPD) loosened debt rules and unlocked hundreds of billions of euros for Germany\u2019s armed forces and its crumbling infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\n\tMerz vowed to build \u201cEurope\u2019s largest conventional army\u201d in the face of a hostile Russia and keep up strong support for Ukraine in lockstep with Paris and London.<\/p>\n
\n\tA promise to ramp up NATO spending endeared Merz to Trump, who greeted him warmly at a White House meeting in June, only weeks after a jarring Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Israel bombed Iranian targets, Merz, with a penchant for strong and often controversial one-liners, praised it for doing the \u201cdirty work\u201d \u2013 but last Friday he took the bold step of freezing arms exports to Israel over its Gaza campaign.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn the home front, Merz has pressed a crackdown on irregular migration, a sharp departure from the centrist course of his long-time party rival Angela Merkel.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe has said he must address voter concerns about immigration to stem the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which won a record 20 percent in February\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
\n\tMerz\u2019s heavy focus on global events has earned him the moniker of \u201cforeign chancellor\u201d \u2013 but trouble looms at home, where his SPD allies have often felt overshadowed or sidelined.<\/p>\n
\n\tTo many of them, Merz\u2019s right-wing positions have been hard to swallow in the marriage of convenience they entered following the SPD\u2019s dismal election outcome of 16 percent.<\/p>\n
\n\tGerman voters have not yet fallen in love with Merz either. His personal approval rating slipped 10 points to just 32 percent in the latest poll by public broadcaster ARD.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn an early sign of trouble, Merz\u2019s inauguration on May 6 turned into a white-knuckle ride when rebel MPs opposed him in the first round of the secret ballot.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe was confirmed in the second round, but the debacle pointed to simmering resentment in the left-right coalition.<\/p>\n
\n\tMany have chafed at his hard line on immigration, his vow to slash social welfare and his limited enthusiasm for climate protection.<\/p>\n
\n\tMerz also sparked controversy when he dismissed plans to hoist an LGBTQ rainbow flag on the parliament building by saying the Reichstag was \u201cnot a circus tent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe biggest coalition crisis came last month, sparked by what should have been routine parliamentary business \u2013 the nomination of three new judges to Germany\u2019s highest court.<\/p>\n
\n\tRight-wing online media had strongly campaigned against one of them, SPD nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, calling her a left-wing activist on abortion and other issues.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe CDU\/CSU withdrew support for her and postponed the vote, sparking SPD fury. The issue looked set to fester until Brosius-Gersdorf withdrew her candidature on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\n\tOther trouble came when the CDU\u2019s Bavarian sister party demanded sharp cuts to social benefits for Ukrainian refugees, a position the SPD opposes.<\/p>\n
\n\tVice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the SPD warned the conservatives to refrain from further provocations, telling Welt TV that \u201cwe already have far too many arguments in this government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBoth coalition partners know that open squabbling will turn off voters after discord brought down Scholz\u2019s three-party coalition, and play into the hands of the AfD, their common foe.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor now Merz and most other politicians are on summer holidays, leaving unresolved issues lingering.<\/p>\n
\n\tMerz will need to pay attention, said Wolfgang Schroeder of Kassel University.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe chancellor\u2019s attitude is: I think big-picture and long term, I\u2019m not interested in the small print,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut Schroeder added that all the coalition\u2019s big troubles so far \u2013 from the judge row to Ukrainians refugees \u2013 \u201chave been about the small print.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has driven sweeping changes in security, economic and migration policy during his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-332405","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-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115002928831299634","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332405","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=332405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}