In normal times, Friedrich Merz would have it difficult to get to Federal Chancellor of Germany. But a long time ago we lived times stopped being normal. The leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and candidate of the CDU-CSU Conservative Union has a political career marked by failures: in 2002, Angela Merkel was against prognosis with the headquarters of the Democristian Party, a position to which the then the then Young Deputy Merz aspired as a natural step in his high political ambitions.
Merkel’s victory, a Germanorient woman who had everything against precisely for being a woman and coming from the losing Germany of the cold war, was a hard blow to Merz, an episode that German media describe as personal “overthrow” of which the personal Now probable future German chancellor never replied. Merz decided, in fact, to turn his back on politics in 2009 to devote himself in body and soul to his career in the private sector, where he became a millionaire.
But life sometimes grants second opportunities. When in 2018 Merkel announced that he would not appear again to the presidency of the CDU and that he would not repeat candidacy for the fifth time in a row to the Foreign Ministry, Merz decided to take the step and return to the political arena. A decision that would bring him two more failures: in a congress of his party in 2018, he lost the fight to succeed Merkel at the head of the CDU in front of the dolphin of the then chancellor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (popularly known for the acronym AKK ). In 2021, he stumbled again on the same stone: in another democratic congress, his candidacy to preside over the CDU succumbed to the democratian Renano Armin Laschet, belonging to the centrist of the party. The rightist turn personified by Merz fell again and again.
But both Akk and Laschet failed in their attempt to successfully happen to Merkel at the head of German conservatism. After the federal elections of 2021, in which the democratian candidate Laschet sank into the surveys for a bad performance in recent weeks of the campaign, Merz saw what was perhaps his last chance to save his political aspirations. After three failed attempts, in 2022 he finally became the presidency of the CDU and today, with 69 years, he is closer than ever to become chancellor.
Economic and right -wing liberal
Friedrich Merz comes from Sauerland, a mountainous region located in the southeast of the North-Westphaly Rhinestone. Sauerland is synonymous with traditions and conservatism, and also one of the bastions of German Christian democracy. The CDU is made up of three political families: the centrist, which grouped Merkel, Akk and Laschet; the liberal in the economic; and the most conservative right -wing in the political. Merz brings together the last two.
His followers see it as a standard of conservative values that the CDU should never have abandoned and as the right person for the reforms that an economic model in chronic crisis that has been in recession needs. His critics consider him a return to the past and a figure that sees reality from elitist positions, away from the street. Merz came to qualify as “little Peschas“To the immigration children of Muslim roots and denounced” social tourism “to criticize the reception in Germany of Ukrainian refugees.
Another of Merz’s weak flanks is his past as manager of the Blackrock American Investment Fund. In an interview with the German tabloid Bild Zeitung He came to recognize that he earned a million euros a year and that “upper middle class” was considered. Taking into account that I work more than a decade in positions of directives and law in those spheres, it does not seem wrong to say that Merz is today a millionaire. It has a private plane and is an amateur pilot. That moves him away from the real and salaried middle class, which can hardly be identified with him. There are also voices that call into question their suitability to occupy the German Foreign Ministry after having spent so many years defending the interests of speculative economy funds. Their critics see a potential conflict of interest.
Agricultural Sanitary Cord
The different profiles published on Merz in recent weeks highlight another aspect of his political mood: he likes to assume risks, something completely opposed to the quiet and almost boring leaders Social Democrat Olaf Scholz has tried to imitate without success.
The joint vote of the CDU-CSU with the ultra-right of alternative for Germany (AFD) earlier this February could be an example of that risk tendency. After Aschaffenburg’s attack, in which an Afghan asylum petitioner killed a child already a child in a park, Merz decided to launch that vote in the Bundestag to carry out a parliamentary motion in favor of a migratory policy more restrictive and a new law that made that tightening effective. Both votes received the support from AFD. The first went ahead and the second failed for the abstention of some conservative deputies who decided not to respect the party discipline.
Social democrats, green and post -communists of Die Linke They described the passage of Merz as a “rupture of a taboo”, in a country in which the consensus born after World War II has not been legitimizing any party to the right of the conservative union of the CDU-CSU. Merz’s response has always been the same: voting for something that is considered correct is not incorrect because the ultra -right is also supported. The democratian leader insists that he will never agree with the ultra -right or rule in a minority with the abstention of the Ultra bench. However, doubts persist in this regard.
Merz plays with fire by accepting AFD’s votes, a party that represents Rayanas ethnic national positions with neo -Nazism. His calculation aims to try to recover right -wing vote that has been delivered to the Ultra narrative through a harder tone in migratory policy, safety and border control. The precedents in other European countries show, however, that assuming the argumentative framework of the extreme right usually ends in its legitimation and electoral strengthening.
If the next German coalition government, most likely led by Merz, fails German history as the chancellor who opened the passage of AFD to power.
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