The best chance of becoming Germany’s next chancellor is 69-year-old Friedrich Merz, a wealthy lawyer and politician who has never held public office due to an internal party confrontation with Angela Merkel.
An antipode of Merkel and a fierce critic of Scholz
On February 23 of this year, early elections to the Bundestag will be held, scheduled after the collapse of the coalition led by Olaf Scholz. According to current polls, it is the opposition CDU led by Merz that is currently claiming victory in the vote with 30% support. The AfD (20%) could take second place with the highest result in its history, while Scholz’s SDP is currently gaining about 15% in the polls, taking third place.
Friedrich Merz, the likely future Chancellor of Germany, is known as an antipode of Merkel and a fierce critic of Scholz. His party will not be able to form a government on its own, so it will have to look for allies – among the Social Democrats, the Greens or the Free Democrats. The media deliberately portray Merkel as the antithesis of the Merkel who led Germany for 16 years – both in style and policy. For example, as Reuters writes, while Merkel was a level-headed, consensus-oriented pragmatist who moved the conservative CDU party closer to the center, Merz is a brash and provocative economic liberal.
Unique business experience and a fortune of 12 million euros
Before Merkel resigned as head of the CDU in 2018, Merz held top management positions in a number of corporate business giants. One of the most prominent was his role as head of the supervisory board at the German office of the American investment company BlackRock, which has the largest assets under management in the world (totaling about $11.5 trillion as of 2024). In 2018 he again put forward his candidacy for the post of CDU leader, but only the 2021 elections became an opportunity for him to return to the Bundestag as a member of parliament and, as the new leader of the CDU, to lead its faction in parliament. In September 2024, the CDU officially elected Merz as its candidate for Chancellor of Germany.
According to Spiegel, Merz is considered a “traveller” between the worlds of politics and business. Undoubtedly, he managed to create a useful cycle: his political contacts made him interesting for companies, allowing him to strengthen his reputation as a financial and economic expert. A pleasant bonus was that Merz returned to politics with a solid capital: according to the German magazine Vermögenmagazins, his fortune in 2024 was about 12 million euros.
Merz’s migration policy and prospects regarding Ukraine
Merz is a longtime critic of Angela Merkel’s decision not to close borders to migrants from Syria and other countries in 2015, when Germany accepted almost 900,000 refugees. These statements were made even before the Russo-Ukrainian war’s onset left Germany with more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees. Merz’s proposed course to curb the flow of migrants has gained particular resonance in 2024, with the elections approaching and the AfD party with a similar but more radical agenda gaining popularity.
Since the first months of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Merz has advocated for more aid to Ukraine and even visited Ukraine twice. In May 2022, he arrived in newly liberated Kyiv before the German chancellor. After becoming an official candidate for chancellor, Merz has become more cautious in his statements about supporting Ukraine. His current position is as follows: he claims that the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is a break in eras, and his efforts in the future post as chancellor will be aimed at ending the war as much as possible. According to him, Kyiv should be free of political and military alliances. But at the same time, the head of the CDU adheres to the opinion that a country in a state of war cannot become a member of NATO, and therefore the candidate status cannot yet be granted to it. Merz also emphasized that Ukraine does not need a new special fund to finance aid. He also advocates for closer cooperation between Germany and its allies and an increase in defense spending.
Statistics testify to Merz’s current position and the level of trust in him. Polls show that the CDU currently maintains support at 30-33%, while Scholz’s party has twice as little popularity. This is a high figure, allowing us to predict that Merz’s strategic views have a high chance of being implemented in practice. But at the same time, we should not forget that his main challenge will not be the issue of Ukraine, but the current problems of the German economy compared to previous years of its relatively stable prosperity.
