One year after leading the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) back into government, German chancellor Friedrich Merz has sought to rally his party amid sliding poll numbers and mounting economic pressure.
Addressing around 1,000 delegates at the CDU’s national congress in Stuttgart on Friday, February 20th, Merz acknowledged shortcomings during his first year in office.
Perhaps we didn’t make it clear quickly enough after the change of government that we couldn’t accomplish this enormous reform effort overnight. I accept this criticism.
He urged the party not to succumb to “pessimism, fatalism, and intellectual laziness,” adding, “I want to motivate us to peak performance.”
The speech comes at a delicate moment. When the CDU won last February’s federal election with 28.5% of the vote, Merz promised to steer the party back to its conservative roots after the centrist era of former chancellor Angela Merkel.
Today, the party is polling at around 25%, with some surveys placing the opposition right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ahead.
Merz governs in coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), a partnership he defended as necessary for stability.
However, his need to appease his junior partner has blunted the CDU’s promised shift to the right. There has been no significant U-turn on migration policy, and Merz has categorically ruled out any cooperation with the anti-immigration AfD, declaring, “With these people we have nothing, absolutely nothing to do.”
He has instead pledged to seek support “exclusively in the political centre,” even if that narrows his coalition options, and even though the CDU would have much more in common with the AfD, particularly on migration and the handling of the economy.
Economically, the government faces a daunting landscape. Germany’s growth is forecast at just 1% this year, as industry struggles with high energy costs and weakened competitiveness.
The phase-out of nuclear power and the end of cheap Russian gas imports in recent decades have driven up prices for households and businesses alike, but the government shows no sign of turning away from radical climate policies and harmful energy policies.
Merz has also courted controversy by urging Germans to work more, arguing that prosperity cannot be maintained with a four-day-week mentality. “We cannot maintain prosperity with a four-day week and work-life balance,” he recently said.
On Friday, he addressed the criticism surrounding his words, saying, “We are not accusing anyone of laziness.” He added, “In Germany, people work hard. We remain a high-performing country of doers.”
Perhaps one of his most contentious decisions in the past year has been to authorise around €1 trillion in new borrowing for defence and infrastructure—a dramatic reversal for a politician long associated with fiscal discipline.
“This decision was perhaps the hardest I’ve had to make in the last 12 months,” he told delegates, defending the move as essential to secure Germany’s defence capability in a more dangerous world.
On foreign policy, Merz struck a resolute tone. “We stand with the Ukrainian people without any ifs or buts,” he said.
He also took a swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump, mocking his efforts to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine.
History teaches us one thing: appeasement creates no peace. It only encourages the aggressor. And those who today follow a naïve pacifism are fostering the wars of tomorrow.
According to Apollo News,
despite the friendly applause from the delegates, the speech is unlikely to have calmed or reconciled his critics, either within or outside the party—it was largely more of the same and a recycling of phrases.
