Friedrich Merz has made it to the chancellery after a bumpy start. He needed an unprecedented second vote to secure the necessary majority in the Bundestag in what was a historic debacle in German politics.

Now Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) the regional Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) will be working together as Germany's new government.

For Merz, it is a big step in an unusual career. Merz, who is 69 years old,  has never held a top governmental office with significant leadership responsibilities. He has never been a federal minister, or a state premier, or even mayor of a small town. He is the oldest chancellor to take office since Konrad Adenauer, the first post-war German head of government (1949–1963).

The previous weeks were also the first time he had ever taken part in negotiations aimed at forming a government coalition. The media, as well as some unnamed representatives from the negotiation teams, have at times held this against him. The SPD leaders, Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken, and the head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), Markus Söder, all have experience in this particular kind of wrangling. But as the would-be head of government, Merz hopes to lead a coalition between the CDU and these parties, and mediate between their interests.

'Trans-atlanticist and friend of Europe'

According to the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Merz is a "trans-atlanticist, friend of Europe, and reformer." This, it wrote, could mean he was "exactly the right person for the current times."

From 1989 to 1994, Merz was a member of the European Parliament. This was followed by 15 years in the Bundestag, between 1994 and 2009, during which he rose to become head of the CDU's parliamentary group, only to lose out to Angela Merkel in a struggle for the party leadership. Over these years, he took a particular interest in Germany's relationship with the United States.

A commercial lawyer, Merz hails from Sauerland, an area of North Rhine-Westphalia, east of the Ruhr, where he still lives. It's predominantly a middle-class, rural region, popular with tourists, that tends to espouse conservative, Catholic values.

Merz was clearly more traditionally conservative than his East German rival, the quantum chemist Angela Merkel. Early in his career, he was a close confidant of the now-deceased veteran CDU politician Wolfgang Schäuble, who was a member of the German parliament for more than 50 years.

Merz chose not to stand for parliament again in 2009, and went on to pursue a career in business. From 2016 to 2020, he was chairman of the supervisory board of the German arm of BlackRock, currently the world's largest asset management company, and during this time he was often in the United States on business.

Merz hints at Taurus missile delivery

It wasn't until 2021 that Merz ran again for the Bundestag, and was elected. In fleshing out his plans for government, he has been more outspoken than his taciturn predecessorOlaf Scholz, 

Merz frequently makes a point of mentioning that, for several months now, he has been in regular contact with European heads of government: dinner with France's President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, bilateral talks in Berlin or Brussels. He also intends to travel to the US before the summer recess to meet Republican President Donald Trump.

In a particularly striking example, Merz gave an hour-long TV interview to the German political talk show Caren Miosga eight days before the Easter weekend, in which he spoke about continuing military aid to Ukraine, going significantly beyond the "red line" repeatedly drawn by Chancellor Scholz.

Merz raised the prospect of Germany delivering Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv. These long-range, high-impact weapons would be of great assistance to Ukraine, and could seriously pressure Russia. 

He added that the UK, France, and US had already been supplying cruise missiles, and if the weapons supply was coordinated with its allies, "Germany should also participate." He commented that the Ukrainian army "has to get out of the defensive position — all it does is react." It needed to "be able to exert some control over what's happening."

Merz even explicitly mentioned the possibility of Ukraine destroying the Crimean Bridge, a key strategic link between Russia and the unilaterally annexed Crimean peninsula. With this rhetoric and level of detail, Merz has positioned himself in direct opposition to Scholz, who consistently opposed Taurus deliveries and warned against any further escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Post-election upheaval

Continued support for Ukraine is only one element of the broader political upheaval in Germany that has resulted from the policies of the new US administration — an upheaval that at times has caused Merz's standing and credibility to plummet.

For months, both in the Bundestag and on the campaign trail, Merz and other conservative politicians emphasized the importance of adhering to Germany's debt brake, and called for fiscal discipline. This abruptly changed with the start of the exploratory talks between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. By mid-March, both of Germany's legislative chambers had approved a historically unprecedented decision: From now on, there will be no cap on defense spending.

A package worth €500 billion ($570 billion) is also being introduced, aimed at improving Germany's crumbling infrastructure. This entails easing the debt brake to which, during the election campaign, the CDU and CSU had initially promised to adhere.

Meanwhile, Merz — and all the mainstream parties — have the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) pressuring them from behind. Observers say the AfD's gains in the most recent election have prompted the future coalition partners to include stricter immigration policies and a greater focus on internal security in the coalition agreement.

Just days before the federal election, Merz sparked controversy and confusion, both at home and abroad, by effectively weakening the "firewall" that he, along with all the other mainstream parties, had pledged to maintain against the AfD. Merz accepted the AfD's backing in several parliamentary votes on migration policy, in a bid to help the CDU/CSU and pro-business Free Deomcratic Party (FDP) defeat the remaining red-green votes, which by then no longer held a majority. This move triggered a wave of outrage among politicians and in German civil society.

Now, Merz says he wants to boost the confidence of the German people. "We are a great country of more than 80 million people, who live and work here and take care of their families," he said. He wants to show "that the effort is worth it."

This article was originally written in German. It was first published ahead of the vote on May 6, 2025 and later updated to reflect news developments.

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