(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s last conservative leader, Angela Merkel, built her legacy on policies normally associated with the left: saving the Euro by bailing out Greece and refusing to turn away hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Now, with Germany one year away from a national election, Friedrich Merz, her fellow Christian Democrat and longtime rival, is aiming to unseat Chancellor Olaf Scholz — and undo Merkel’s open-door migration policy — with a far more right-wing agenda.
The two CDU politicians crossed paths during an event celebrating Merkel’s 70th birthday on Wednesday, where the former chancellor congratulated Merz on his nomination. “Everyone knows that both of us had highs and lows in our political lives,” Merkel said in the short speech in Berlin. “I wish you all the best for the coming months.”
As if to underscore how much his leadership would differ from Merkel’s, Merz remarked at the same event, “history doesn’t repeat itself,” drawing a cryptic smile from the former chancellor.
Should Merz win, it would mark a definitive break with the Merkel era. During her 18 years as CDU leader, the physicist from East Germany reshaped the party and welcomed in more centrist voters. Merz, by contrast, is a member of the old West German elite, has close ties in the financial sector and belongs to the more conservative, business-friendly arm of the CDU. Out of frustration with Merkel’s policies — and after she ousted him as caucus leader — he gave up his seat in parliament in 2009 in order to join a prominent law firm. He later chaired the supervisory board of BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG before returning to the political stage in 2021.
Merz, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has already staked out more conservative positions: He’s vowed to reverse the legalization of cannabis and reconsider the country’s exit from nuclear power, two of the center-left Scholz’s government’s pet projects. He wants to increase Germany’s defense spending from €52 billion to around €80 billion, although he hasn’t said where the money would come from, as he’s ruled out raising taxes and plans to stick to the country’s strict debt limit.
He also sees it as his mission to reverse the flow of migration to Germany, which increased substantially after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
At a moment in which Germany is facing a possible recession, Merz’s main strength lies in what voters see as his economic competence. According to a recent Forsa poll, 47% of Germans trust Merz to get the German economy back on track. Only 16% say the same about Scholz, who adopted Merkel’s consensus-oriented approach and has tried to imitate her pragmatic, down-to-earth leadership style.
Despite the CDU/CSU’s 16 point lead in the polls, however, a Merz victory isn’t a guarantee. To win, he’ll need to improve his standing with women, East Germans and younger voters, and overcome the criticism that he can come off as detached and arrogant. The six-and-a-half-foot tall politician often flies to events in his private jet, and his height and manner of speaking can create the impression that he’s condescending to voters, as even his political allies admit.
Moreover, the 68-year-old is notorious for having a short temper and making controversial remarks — useful fodder for Scholz’s campaign team. In one instance, Merz called Ukrainians who had fled to Germany in the wake of Russia’s invasion “social welfare tourists” and accused them of exploiting the benefits system. In another, he claimed Germans couldn’t get dental appointments because the state was too busy paying for “refugees to get their teeth fixed.” And at the end of the 1990s he voted against a law that defined rape within marriage as a statutory offense.
The SPD plans to depict the CDU leader as a relic from another age — a politician with an outdated worldview and regressive ideas about women and family, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s strategy. When the chancellor learned that Merz would be his rival in next year’s election, he took it in stride. “That’s fine with me,” Scholz said with a smirk.
As Scholz’s low approval ratings have also made him Merz’s preferred adversary, next year’s election is shaping up to become a race between two unpopular candidates.
Having lost two bids to lead the CDU before securing the position in 2021, Merz wasn’t the obvious nominee for chancellor. But his path to the candidacy was cleared last week after Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder and Hendrik Wuest, the state premier of Merz’s native North Rhine Westphalia, suddenly withdrew from the race. That surprised many as Wuest, a boyish 49-year-old long seen as Merz’s strongest internal rival, polls well with women and younger voters and is seen as the new face of German conservatism.
According to a new poll by broadcaster ZDF, almost 50% of respondents think that there are better conservative candidates than Merz.
Merz’s candidacy has given rise to concerns that the CDU might be repeating the mistake it made in 2020, when the unpopular former party head Armin Laschet lost against Scholz. Even within the CDU, some doubt whether Merz can appeal to the centrist voters he’ll need to win the election, including more liberal ones who voted for Merkel.
The first warning signs that Merz might have trouble mobilizing voters appeared just a few days after his nomination, when the CDU came in fourth in a state election in Brandenburg — behind the SPD and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which secured nearly 30%. The CDU’s result – just 12% — was its third worst in any regional vote since World War II.
Merz’s team is already thinking about how they can soften their boss’s profile and broaden his appeal. To win over female voters, the candidate and his wife were recently featured in the Bild tabloid’s Sunday edition. In the profile, Charlotte Merz presented her husband as a loving family man who bikes to the bakery to get bread for breakfast.
Many hurdles remain between Merz and the chancellery, as even his supporters admit. But to improve his odds, the candidate could take some lessons from his longtime arch-rival: Angela Merkel.
--With assistance from Michael Nienaber.
(Updates to add chart reflecting a Merz advantage over Scholz, and adds language about ZDF poll.)
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