Friedrich Merz’s 100 Days of Failure 

It should have been an omen of things to come when Friedrich Merz made history by almost failing to be elected as chancellor. Back in May, nearly 100 days ago, MPs in the German Bundestag cast their votes on whether to accept Merz as chancellor. In a situation unprecedented in post-war Germany, he lost by six votes, forcing parliament to try again. This time, he managed to limp over the finish line.

It was a humiliation Merz never truly recovered from. His government was weighed down by weakness and vulnerability before it even began. During his election campaign, he promised lower taxes, more growth, and tougher border controls. But so far, he has delivered very little. After almost three months in office, he has struggled to keep his head above water, battling coalition infighting, domestic stagnation, and public disillusionment. The German public—having not been that enthusiastic about Merz in the first place—are thoroughly unimpressed. Approval ratings for Merz’s first 100 days are far worse than his predecessor’s, Olaf Scholz. In fact, a mere 28% of Germans are satisfied with the work his government has done so far. On a personal level, two-thirds of voters see Merz as untrustworthy—no wonder, as he kicked off his chancellorship by bypassing parliament to introduce a €500 billion spending programme, which never once appeared in his party’s manifesto.

Compounding the low public mood is the dismal state of Germany’s economy. The country’s growth has stalled, with GDP falling by 0.1% from Q1 to Q2 this year, and annual GDP growth still sitting below pre-pandemic levels. This is only set to get worse. A poll of German executives found that 59% of them believed that Germany’s economic prospects would continue to deteriorate over the next 12 months. Sales from all its major car companies plummeted this year, and exports to the U.S. are also in free-fall. Energy prices remain eye-wateringly high, some of the highest in Europe, spurred on by Germany’s pursuit of carbon neutrality. Before the election, Merz had gestured towards reconsidering the phase-out of nuclear energy, but soon backtracked, declaring it unfeasible. Instead, Merz’s government has committed itself to Net Zero. In his first official address to the Bundestag, Merz expressed his enthusiasm for continuing the Energiewende, pushing the adoption of renewable energy and making Germany carbon neutral by 2045. Any meaningful shift towards cheaper or more reliable energy will be hamstrung by the CDU’s coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD). The SPD, holding the vice-chancellorship and key ministries like finance and defence, has been pressing to keep much of previous chancellor Olaf Scholz’s policy programme intact—from costly Net Zero targets to generous welfare spending. This is despite clear signs that many German voters would prefer their government take a rightward turn. 

These tensions were made clear in the doomed selection of left-wing law professor Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf to the Constitutional Court. Brosius-Gersdorf’s nomination by the SPD caused controversy among the Right of the CDU and Bavarian counterpart CSU when it emerged she held liberal views on abortion and had defended the legality of banning the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Catholic bishops and 50 centre-right MPs, led by Merz himself, opposed Brosius-Gersdorf’s candidacy, which would have to receive a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to be successful. The CDU pulled its vote and she withdrew last week from the nomination—not before the fiasco had laid bare how fragile and taut the governing coalition really was.

One of the sorest points of contention during the coalition negotiations was migration. Throughout the election campaign, Merz made much of his planned immigration reforms, promising a Migrationswende and a tightening of the country’s borders. So far, this has been decidedly lacklustre, although there have been some very small steps in the right direction. In June, the Bundestag voted to restrict family reunions for many migrants, and the number of asylum applicants have reportedly halved since January. But the coalition means that, despite Merz’s tough talk, the Right of the CDU remains constrained by the SPD, which blocked many of the more substantial border reforms—like more stringent deportation measures—early on. At the same time, the few migration successes Merz can boast about are dulled by the fact that the German authorities have locked themselves in a conflict on the Polish border, as police vans have been caught dumping illegal migrants in Poland. To make matters worse, Merz’s government has run into legal trouble, with a Berlin court ruling in June that plans to turn asylum seekers back at the border are illegal, and that they must first be processed under EU law. Then, last month, a court declared in a separate case that the German government was obligated to resettle an Afghan family in Pakistan after Germany suspended its Afghan refugee programme.

For ordinary Germans, it certainly doesn’t feel like Merz has made a substantial dent in the country’s migration crisis. This is most notable when it comes to crime, with many high-profile and violent cases being perpetrated by foreign-born criminals. In May, a Syrian asylum seeker reportedly stabbed five people outside a bar in Bielefeld, motivated by Islamism. Last month, a Syrian refugee with a prior criminal record allegedly injured four passengers on a train from Germany to Austria with an axe and hammer. The country has seen a sharp rise in gang rape, school violence, and violent crime in general, all of which are disproportionately committed by foreign criminals. Official statistics show that nearly 40% of all violent crime suspects are foreign nationals, despite making up far less of the population. Gang rape cases—often involving multiple foreign-born perpetrators—have surged in the past year, and knife attacks are now averaging more than two per day in German schools.

It’s no wonder, then, that the AfD is breathing down Merz’s neck. Just weeks after he won the election, the AfD took the top spot in the polls, and has been in a firm second place ever since. More recently, a survey from this month found that the two parties were neck-and-neck, each predicted to win 25% of the vote if there were an election right now. Merz has at least broken with previous governments’ scheme to explicitly ban the AfD if it risks doing too well electorally, but he seems quite happy to allow Germany’s second-largest party to be marginalised. It was under his watch that Rhineland-Palatinate barred AfD members from joining the civil service, and that an AfD candidate was blocked from running for mayor in Ludwigshafen. 

Merz has also continued the establishment tradition of cracking down on free speech, overseeing police raids on hundreds of individuals for things they wrote online, including ‘crimes’ such as calling Merz a “dirty drunk” or an “asshole.” As such, free speech has become a pressing concern for German voters, with 84% of people in one survey saying they feel afraid to speak their minds.

Merz’s first 100 days have been defined by disappointment and a near-pathological aversion to delivering change. It was clear from the start that he would not be the break from conventional politics he promised, but rather a continuation of the very centrist consensus that voters rejected back in February. Over the last three months, Merz has achieved little beyond the continuing betrayal of the German people.