No one closes rank quite like Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Two weeks before 59 million Germans choose a new parliament – and, most likely, start a power transfer back to the CDU – the centre-right party is anxious to send a signal of unity.
Standing ovations with slow, rhythmic applause are the order of the day at each campaign appearance of CDU leader Friedrich Merz.
The lanky, bespectacled lawyer will turn 70 in November. After a 36-year wait, he has never been closer to power. A fortnight from the election, however, many think Merz’s influence has more to do with polarisation than politics.
Last week the CDU leader performed a taboo-breaking rightward pivot on migration and asylum in the Bundestag, relying on votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Though the CDU migration proposals were of no concrete consequence, they were highly symbolic.
[ The Irish Times view on the German election: a worrying rightward shiftOpens in new window ]
Bundestag rivals accused him of “opening the doors to hell” in the vote, with echoes of conservative pacts with the Nazis that ended prewar German democracy. On Sunday 160,000 outraged protesters braved the cold to gather outside Berlin’s CDU headquarters.
One sign captured the mood: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas 1933”.
Even former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel broke her self-imposed political silence to call the AfD-backed Merz migration motion “wrong”.
A decade ago her open-border politics and “we can manage this” refugee mantra drew popular support – and attracted global praise. But Germany is in a very different place a decade later. Even back then, resistance to her strategy was palpable. The eastern state of Saxony, for instance, saw marches organised by the “patriotic” civil rights group Pegida. The Saxon AfD was the first to tap migration as a more sustainable political calling card than EU bailouts.
This week the Merz campaign tour stopped in Saxony, now an AfD heartland, where the far-right captured 30.7 per cent in last September’s state election – just one point behind the CDU.
Growing migration fatigue – anger at criminal asylum seekers and a fumbled state response – has shifted Germany’s political centre. Less multicultural Berlin and more conservative Saxony: Merz is hoping to catch that wave, reshaping the CDU as centre-right party with a stronger conservative, law-and-order profile.
In Dresden, the Saxon capital, Merz conceded that the AfD’s rise is a reflection of others’ political shortcomings.
“Me and my party carry a big part of the responsibility,” he said. Amid growing applause, he urged Saxon voters not to “waste” their vote this time around on the AfD.
“I want to make sure that the politics of my party is corrected to a point where the so-called Alternative for Germany is no longer needed,” he said, to whoops and cheers.
In Dresden, and other campaign appearances, he promised new rules to “limit” migration – but remains vague on whether this correction will include turning back asylum seekers at the border.
That was a demand in last week’s nonbinding proposals backed by the AfD, which triggered a wave of protest. In Dresden, some 3,000 demonstrated near the Merz event, many carrying signs that simply read: “Disgrace.”
“Many people were very unsettled by that vote, particularly those who would have voted for the CDU under the assumption they wouldn’t ally themselves with the AfD,” said Albrecht Pallas, a Saxon MP for the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which leads Germany’s ruling coalition. “People out here today are worried about the future of our democracy.”
Saxon CDU voters – traditionally on the conservative end of the political spectrum – worry about democracy, but for different reasons.
“It’s important that democracy survives against growing anti-democratic tendencies,” said Tilo Höhne, a 56-year-old Dresden CDU supporter. “On the other hand, you cannot exclude a quarter of voters from democratic processes indefinitely, or else they will reject democracy itself – which only survives with broad public support.”
The party’s current support is steady, but not stellar, nearly three points behind Merkel’s worst election result. Last week’s rebellion of 12 CDU MPs against the migration motion, analysts suggest, reflects wider dissent.
“He doesn’t have his party completely behind him,” says Prof Klaus Schubert, political scientist at the University of Münster. “The irony of all this is how Merz, a self-anointed economic expert, has trapped himself with the migration topic when the economy should be the biggest election issue.”
Aware of that, Merz is working to shift attention in the last fortnight of the campaign.
With Germany heading for a third year of flat growth – a postwar first – the CDU is promising a nine-point action plan for its first 100 days. It wants lower income tax and corporate tax, simplified bureaucracy and a push for higher investment in research and infrastructure – potentially with a reformed debt brake to allow greater borrowing.
Critics say the plans are unfunded and lacking detail, unlike the CDU’s detailed plans to undo welfare reforms of the Olaf Scholz coalition.
Merz says Germany must be “ready to take on leadership responsibility” in Europe by renewing frayed ties to Paris and Warsaw – in particular to provide a coherent EU response to the Trump administration. On the campaign trail, he has toned down his previous robust rhetoric on arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Merz was born in 1955 into a Catholic family in the western Sauerland district. He battled tuberculosis aged 10, went on to study law and was a 33-year-old district court judge in 1989 when he won a seat for the CDU in the third directly elected European Parliament. After one term in Strasbourg he returned to Bonn as one of many young disciples around Helmut Kohl.
When Angela Merkel snatched the CDU leadership in 2000 she appointed Merz as her deputy. Sensing his ambition, she dropped him after two years. The animosity was so great that, when she stepped out as leader in 2018, she tried to thwart – twice – his ambition to be CDU leader.
He succeeded on the third attempt, to ongoing despair of Merkelist CDU centrists. While Merz hopes his conservative stripes are back in fashion, rivals inside and outside his party never tire of skewering him as an ageing Tory Boy.
After he was ousted by Merkel, Merz became a millionaire corporate lawyer who advised the BlackRock investment fund. He described himself as “upper middle class” in an interview, yet flies his own private jet. In the cockpit of his €1 million Austrian-built Diamond DA 62, his call name – in line with aviation rules – is “Foxtrot Mike”.
Merz allies insist the rightward shift of the CDU didn’t start last week. Nor, they say, is he turning back the clock entirely. Its new party programme from last May is open to “diverse families” and multiculturalism, but has declared as unwelcome “an Islam that doesn’t share our families and rejects our free society”.
The Merz campaign is high-risk and fluid: a centre-right cocktail that is being remixed on a daily basis, with no certainty it will appeal to voter tastes.
German political analysts disagree on whether his migration shift was an act of madness – alienating centrist voters and complicating coalition talks – or a master stroke to pull in one third of German voters who are still undecided.
For now, fears that Merz damaged the CDU with its Bundestag migration motions appear unfounded. A week on, a Thursday poll showed the CDU had gained one point to 31 per cent in polls – but so, too, had the AfD. It remains in second place on 21 per cent.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here
