# Friedrich Merz Friedrich Merz has been Chancellor of Germany since **6 May 2025**, leading a CDU/CSU–SPD coalition. He is the most economically liberal and most Atlanticist CDU leader in a generation, and he arrived in office as the political conditions for both were disappearing. ## The Career Merz's biography is the story of the CDU's road not taken. He led the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2000 until Angela Merkel displaced him in 2002, then left frontline politics for corporate law and, from 2016 to 2020, the chairmanship of **BlackRock Germany**. He returned after Merkel's retirement, losing two leadership contests before winning in 2022. His long-standing argument was that Merkel's centrism had vacated ground on the right that the [[AfD]] then occupied, and that a more conservative CDU would win those voters back. His chancellorship is the test of that proposition, and so far the results run the other way — the AfD leads the national polling average at 27.8% against 21.4% for his own party. ## A Weak Start Merz became **the first postwar chancellor-designate to fail the first Bundestag ballot**, taking 310 votes where 316 were needed, before winning 325 on a second round the same day. Roughly eighteen coalition members withheld support; the identities have never been established. His coalition holds 328 of 630 seats. Combined, the two governing parties poll under 34%. ## The Firewall Merz's most consequential political commitment is the one he has been under sustained pressure to abandon. He has maintained the **Brandmauer** — the refusal to govern with or rely on the AfD — while a majority of Germans have moved against it. An ARD poll in August 2026 found **59% could envision cooperation** with the party. When Saxony's premier Michael Kretschmer said in July 2026 that "those who still talk about firewalls have not recognized the signs of the times," Merz rejected it publicly, invoking Germany's "special historical responsibility." Three eastern state elections in September 2026 will test whether that position survives contact with coalition arithmetic in states where the AfD polls above 35%. He has also been on the receiving end of direct American intervention on the AfD's behalf — [[JD Vance]] at Munich, [[Marco Rubio]] calling Germany "tyranny in disguise," [[Elon Musk]] campaigning for the party on X. See [[German History Hub]]. ## The Rupture with Washington Merz is an instinctive Atlanticist who has presided over the worst period in the relationship since 2003. He publicly questioned whether the US and Israel had an exit plan for the Iran war in March 2026. Trump attacked him for "interfering." On **1–2 May 2026 the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of roughly 5,000 US troops from Germany**, and a memo the same day cancelled the long-range missile deployment Berlin had been promised. His response has been to buy and build rather than to protest: up to 400 Tomahawk missiles and three Typhon launchers, a request to license-produce them domestically, and a commitment in July 2026 to **double the German defence budget within four years and reach NATO's 3.5% core target by 2029** — six years early. ## Why He Matters Here Merz is the test case for the mainstream conservative response to a rising radical right, and the answer so far is inconclusive in an instructive way. He tried the strategy American establishment Republicans debated and abandoned: move right on substance, hold the line on legitimacy. The substance has not recovered the voters. The line has held, at real political cost, against pressure from his own regional leaders, a majority of the public, and the government of the United States. ## See Also - [[Musk AfD Campaign]] · [[2025 German Federal Election]] · [[Olaf Scholz]] - [[German History Hub]] · [[AfD]] · [[Alice Weidel]] - [[Vance Munich Security Conference Speech]] - [[NATO Summit Ankara 2026]] · [[Coalition of the Willing]] - [[Iran War 2026]]