Friedrich Merz, chairman of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is set to become Germany's next chancellor based and will likely be sworn in in early May.

The 69-year-old will be the oldest chancellor since Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the new Federal Republic of Germany, who took office in 1949 at the age of 73.

Merz whose CDU/CSU alliance won February's elections garnering 28.5% of the vote will be heading a coalition government with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

He hopes to quickly revive Europe's top economy in the face of a trade war launched by US President Donald Trump.

Merz's popularity ratings, however, are very low following his U-turn on public debt. Following his election victory he swiftly had the outgoing Bundestag pave the way for taking out unprecedented loans of almost one trillion euros by softening Germany's strict debt rules.

This maneuver has exposed him to internal party criticism and accusations not only from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that he has broken campaign pledges and caved in to key demands of the SPD.

In the two months since the election, Merz's CDU/CSU bloc has lost four points while the AfD has been rising in opinion polls: Both now stand at 24%.

Keeping a distance to the AfD?

Compared with former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was seen as a calm and calculating tactician, Merz is viewed as a very different kind of politician, much more willing to take political risks. 

He did this recently weeks before the election triggering a political storm when he attempted to pass a tough immigration bill through parliament with the help of the AfD.

This move triggered shock waves throughout the country, with protesters decrying the collaboration as an unprecedented violation of the post-war taboo of cooperating with the far right.

However, Merz apparently saw his move as a gamble aimed at curbing the success of the anti-immigration AfD.

Merz and Merkel

Merz was often thought as Angela Merkel's nemesis. As she rose to power, Merz gradually moved away from the political arena and returned to his work as a lawyer. In 2009, he no longer stood as a candidate for the Bundestag.

Merz hails from the Sauerland — a region of low mountains in western Germany — and is both a Catholic and a lawyer, like his father before him. To this day, he lives not far from the place where he was born. In 1989, at the age of 33, he became a member of the European Parliament for the CDU. Five years later, he switched to the Bundestag and quickly made a name for himself as a sharp speaker. What he said in the parliamentary group carried weight.

Merz's exit from politics was followed by his rise in the private sector. From 2005 to 2021, he was part of an international law firm and took on top positions on supervisory and administrative boards. From 2016 to 2020, he was chairperson of the supervisory board of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, in Germany.

But when Merkel announced she would be leaving politics in 2021, Merz returned and gradually rose through the ranks once again. The CDU elected him party leader in 2022 on his third attempt. He had a reputation as a liberal economic representative of the conservative CDU wing.

Controversial statements

Merz voted against liberalizing abortion laws and against pre-implantation genetic diagnosis in the 1990s. He also infamously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997.

He was always consistently in favor of nuclear power and pushed for a more liberal economic policy and a reduction in bureaucracy. Almost 25 years ago, he lamented the effects of German migration policy, spoke of "problems with foreigners" and insisted that there should be a "dominant guiding culture" in Germany.

Merz stands for a CDU that has become much more conservative, even though his own positions have changed little in the last 20 years. 

Unsurprisingly, during the election campaign leaders of the center-left Social Democratic Party launched personal attacks on Merz.

"Friedrich Merz is deepening the divisions in the democratic center of our country in the final stages of the election campaign," SPD leader Lars Klingbeil wrote in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

"That is not how someone who wants to be chancellor for everyone speaks," Matthias Miersch, the SPD's general secretary,  told news agency dpa. "That is how a mini-Trump speaks."

This article was originally written in German and first published in November 2024 when Friedrich Merz became his party's top candidate. It has been updated to reflect latest developments.

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