Friedrich Merz

What it is

Friedrich Merz has served as Germany's Federal Chancellor since May 6, 2025, heading a CDU/CSU-SPD grand coalition. A commercial lawyer from Brilon, North Rhine-Westphalia, he represents the CDU's economically liberal and socially conservative wing. His chancellorship has one defining strategic pivot: ending Germany's postwar restraint on military spending and committing the country to rearmament at scale.

History

Merz joined the CDU in 1972 at age 16. He studied law and political science at the University of Bonn and Marburg (1976-1981), briefly served as a judge in Saarbrücken, then moved into corporate law. He entered the European Parliament in 1989, served until 1994, then won a Bundestag seat for North Rhine-Westphalia's Hochsauerlandkreis in 1994. He chaired the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2000 to 2002, making him Angela Merkel's main intra-party rival during her consolidation of power. He lost that contest and left parliament in 2009, spending over a decade as senior partner and later senior counsel at the international law firm Mayer Brown LLP, while also leading the Atlantik-Brücke, the German-American business diplomacy organization. He sought the CDU chairmanship in 2018 and lost narrowly to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. He stood again in January 2021, losing to Armin Laschet by a thin margin. After the CDU's worst federal election result in its postwar history (24.1 percent in September 2021), he won the party chairmanship in January 2022 and led a sustained opposition rebuild.

Current state

The CDU/CSU won 28.6 percent of the vote in Germany's February 2025 snap election, producing a CDU/CSU-SPD coalition with a working Bundestag majority. Merz became chancellor on May 6, 2025. His government secured an exemption from Germany's constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for military expenditure and approved a record €82.6 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2026. Combined with the separately legislated Sondervermögen (special fund), total German defense outlays reached approximately €108 billion for 2026, the highest nominal defense allocation in the history of the Federal Republic. Germany has pledged to reach NATO's 3.5 percent of GDP defense spending benchmark by 2029. The E5 Berlin summit in June 2026 was a focal point of Merz's alliance diplomacy before the NATO leaders' meeting in Turkey. Domestically, his government launched a pension reform commission to address structural underfunding of Germany's public retirement system. German positions also shaped the EU Council multi-year financial framework talks. The 2027 federal budget faces a structural gap as the military buildup's fiscal drag accumulates. Approval remained weak: in April 2026, only 15 percent of Germans expressed satisfaction with the government's policies.

Relationships

Within the coalition, Merz governs alongside an SPD that accepted defense expansion in exchange for social spending protections, a tension that will widen as the 2027 budget is negotiated. He has aligned Germany closely with NATO's eastern-flank posture, deepening ties with Poland, the Baltic states, and France. His government's role in the EU-Mercosur agreement concluded at Asunción in July 2026 reflected his pro-trade economic preferences. Germany's defense procurement surge, including the F126 frigate program under revision (see 德国取消F126护卫舰项目，莱茵金属遭受海军订单重挫), has placed the Bundeswehr and domestic defense industry at the center of economic policy in a way not seen since reunification. Merz's Atlantik-Brücke background and his two decades in international corporate law gave him established networks in US policy and business circles, though his tenure has coincided with turbulence in US-European relations.

What to watch

Whether Merz can pass the 2027 federal budget without reopening the constitutional debt-brake debate is the immediate fiscal test. The pension reform commission's recommendations are due in late 2026. NATO's 3.5 percent GDP commitment binds Germany to spending levels not seen since the Cold War, and coalition support for that trajectory may weaken as fiscal costs accumulate and the SPD faces its own voter pressures. The CDU enters the 2029 federal election cycle as the party of rearmament; how German voters weigh security gains against fiscal constraint will define Merz's political legacy.