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“Mr. Merz, we believed in your political leadership. We trusted you. And we have fought for you,” the letter read. “But we are now asking the question: for what? For a CDU that submits to the left-wing mainstream?”
After years of weak, divided government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, many European leaders had hoped Merz would provide stronger German leadership within the European Union. Merz too has vowed to provide that leadership in light of the challenges posed by U.S. President Donald Trump, vowing after his victory in the Feb. 23 snap election “to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”
But Merz’s recent political difficulties have left him injured, a weakened leader who may have to spend more time attempting to repair his damaged image at home. Already Germany’s conservative bloc is dropping in the polls while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — set to become Germany’s biggest opposition party when the new Bundestag convenes — is benefiting from the incoming chancellor’s new vulnerability.
Germany’s latest benchmark Deutschlandtrend poll shows support for Merz’s conservative bloc dropping three percentage points to 26 percent and the AfD gaining by the same margin to reach 24 percent support, its strongest-ever result. Perhaps even more concerning for Merz, only 25 percent of Germans approve of his performance, down 10 percentage points from February, when the conservatives won the national election.
Merz’s recent political problems began when he reached a historic agreement with the SPD and the Greens to unleash as much as €1 trillion in new spending for defense and infrastructure over the next decade, including €100 billion for Germany’s green transition. While Germany’s dramatic move to reverse more than 15 years of self-imposed austerity drew approval abroad, many domestic conservatives quietly smarted, believing that Merz — who had preached a conservative gospel of fiscal discipline ahead of the election — had given his center-left opponents the debt-fueled spending they’d long advocated.
The move also opened him up to fierce attacks from the AfD, whose leaders accused Merz of betraying his own voters. “What do you actually stand for, Mr. Merz?” one of the AfD’s leaders, Tino Chrupalla, asked in parliament. “By now, you have the mRNA of the SPD implanted in you.”
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