When asked who Germans would like to see as chancellor, Alice Weidel, chairwoman of the AfD, overtook him just two days before Christmas. German voters, who believed they had already had enough bad luck with the previous left-wing green government, have already given up hope after ten months of Merz that anything would improve just because there is now a black-red coalition in the chancellery instead of a red-green-yellow one.
Disappointment within their own ranks
Now, voters are known to be fickle creatures, and elections are only held every four to five years anyway, which makes it all the more important for a chancellor to have the support of their own ranks, i.e. their own party. But it is precisely there that the mood towards their own party leader is even worse, not to say at an all-time low.
One of the most common phrases currently heard even from veteran party soldiers within the CDU is: ‘This man is the biggest disappointment.’ When talking to previously loyal Christian Democrats, there is a certain bewilderment about the total political failure of this former hope of the conservative wing in particular, but also of those who had hoped he would bring back reason in economic and fiscal policy matters.
However, there is also a certain sense of helplessness as to whether Merz has always been this way and people simply did not want to see it, or whether it was only access to power, the position of Chancellor and the will to retain power – whatever the cost – that turned him into an opportunist. It is clear that Merz is sacrificing one election promise after another just to remain in the coalition with the Social Democrats. He rejects the alternative of opening up to the AfD as a coalition partner more strictly than large sections of his own party members, refusing even to discuss the idea of a minority government, which would be possible. This means that the CDU has effectively placed itself at the mercy of its coalition partner, the SPD, which is relishing the opportunity to exploit this situation.
It is a fact that Friedrich Merz, who just a year ago made grandiose promises and announcements during the election campaign that he would change this country and restore reason and expertise after the failed left-wing green experiments of the previous government led by Olaf Scholz (SPD), Robert Habeck (Greens) and Christian Lindner (FDP), has delivered none of this.
Not only was the first promise, that the people would feel the economic progress in their wallets before the summer of 2025, not kept. The ‘autumn of reforms’ promised by the government did not take place either, and 2025 is only a few days away.
In fact, there is not even a plan for 2026. Germany has four years of recession behind it, a record high in corporate insolvencies, and key industries such as the automotive sector, the steel industry and chemical giants are struggling or relocating their plants abroad, as BASF has done. Electricity prices are among the highest in the world with no prospect of improvement, and in response, the last functioning nuclear power plants are being blown up in a publicity stunt instead of being restarted. They are simply continuing as before. The first mockers are already referring to him as ‘Friedrich Merkel’ in reference to his arch-rival Angela Merkel. He has not corrected her course on either migration policy or the country's energy policy; instead, he is taking it to extremes through inaction.
Dramatic economic situation
By now, even economic experts such as Clemens Fuest, head of the renowned Ifo Institute, who had supported Friedrich Merz's debt policy at the beginning of the year 2024, that the massive debt package of over €500 billion, which Merz had pushed through before taking office in the German Bundestag disguised as a ‘special fund’ for innovation and structural reforms, is being spent on everything imaginable at all levels, except for important structural investments. Accordingly, the Ifo Institute has been talking about Germany's ‘dramatic economic situation’ since October 2025 and warned of ‘Italian conditions’.
The promised migration turnaround, which Merz had announced during the election campaign, including complete border closures and deportations, is also not taking place. Although border controls are preventing significantly more illegal migrants from entering the country, but family reunification alone has already brought in over 100,000 migrants this year, and the government is still flying in alleged ‘local workers’ from Afghanistan to Germany at its own expense, while at the same time failing to deport even the most serious repeat offenders and asylum fraudsters from the country. Over 50 per cent of recipients of the so-called ‘Bürgergeld’, the social welfare benefit for citizens, are not German citizens at all, but migrants with uncertain residence status who are now waiting for their asylum proceedings to be completed at the expense of German taxpayers. Merz’s promised abolition of the Bürgergeld has been renamed. It is now called ‘Grundsicherung’ (basic security), but nothing else has changed.
A false start from the outset
This also has consequences for his own party. Just how little support Merz has within his own party has been dramatically demonstrated several times since the summer. In July 2025, Merz failed to get the candidates already negotiated with coalition partner SPD approved for the vacant seats on the Federal Constitutional Court because his own parliamentary group refused to follow him. The election had to be called off before it could end in the embarrassment of a defeat at the ballot box. The SPD's preferred candidate, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorff, was an absolute no-go for the majority of Christian Democrats because of her openly pro-abortion stance. Both Merz and his parliamentary party leader Jens Spahn had made the blunder of assuming that the newly elected CDU MPs would simply nod in agreement without comment to any candidate put forward to them. The parliamentary party rebelled and got its way.
In truth, however, this was not Friedrich Merz's first failure. He was the first chancellor in post-war German history to need two rounds of voting to be elected to office. It was a historic false start that has now become a recurring theme throughout his entire term in office. The chancellor has no power to assert himself.
Going back even further, even his election as CDU party leader had been a double misfire, requiring three attempts.
In the first attempt, he lost the vote to Angela Merkel's preferred candidate, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was more than a colourless figure with nothing to speak for her but that she was not Friedrich Merz. That was enough at the time. However, on the night before the vote at the party conference, she had also ‘bought’ votes from the Christian Democratic Youth (JU) at the last minute and, in return, secured the position of secretary-general for the then chairman of the CDU’s youth organisation, Paul Ziemiak. His second attempt to become party leader was then ruined by Armin Laschet, former Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous federal state, who then lost the election as the CDU's candidate for Chancellor. Three attempts to become party leader, two attempts to be confirmed as chancellor by his own coalition. The fact that he does not have his own house in order and cannot even be sure of the votes of his own people should remain a symptom.
No lessons learned
After the debacle surrounding the election of judges to the Federal Constitutional Court, other politicians might have learned their lesson. At the end of November 2025, however, Merz runs into the next debacle surrounding the vote on a new pension law. This time, it is the young members of his own parliamentary group who fail to follow him, including the grandson of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who has since followed in his grandfather's footsteps. Once again, Merz and his adjutant, the parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn, had repeated the same mistake and made firm promises to the coalition partner SPD in a small circle that had neither been discussed nor decided upon with their own MPs in the parliamentary group beforehand.
Friedrich Merz's visit to the federal party conference of the Junge Union then turned into a trial by fire for the Chancellor. It is essential to note that this event is usually a home game for a CDU party leader. The Junge Union in particular had campaigned tirelessly for Friedrich Merz. Merz also owes his nomination within the party as both party leader and candidate for chancellor to them. Merz had already put this euphoric solidarity of the party's youth to the test at the beginning of the year when he announced the end of the debt brake.
They resented him greatly for now wanting to burden the younger generation with enormous debts and costs in the future in the wake of the pension reform, just to satisfy his coalition partner, the SPD. His speech at the JU party conference was met with icy silence and no applause from the packed hall – never before had a chancellor been so openly rebuffed there.
Merz was ultimately only able to secure the vote on the pension bill because the extreme left-wing party wanted to help him in the Bundestag and announced that it would vote in favour of the pension programme. Too many of his own party members had threatened to vote against it. In the end, Friedrich Merz narrowly secured the so-called ‘chancellor majority’, but he had been shot down a second time after such a short time in office. Again by his own people.
Merz's preferred candidate fails
But according to the German proverb, all good things come in threes. December 2025 brought the German Chancellor his third defeat shortly before the Christmas break – and yes, once again it was caused by his own party. Merz failed to push through ‘his’ candidate, State Secretary Günter Krings from the Interior Ministry, in the election of the new chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is affiliated with the party.
Instead, the foundation's general meeting elected a woman to the important post with whom Merz already has a history of defeat: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who once ruined his first attempt to become party chairman. Now she is back.
After voluntarily stepping down as party chair, she disappeared from the political scene, only to reappear out of nowhere and secure control over the CDU's political groundwork and 95 foreign offices worldwide. Both within the party and in the public eye, this election defeat is not being blamed on Günter Krings, who enjoys an excellent reputation within the party; it is being interpreted as a disaster and a wake-up call for Merz. Kramp-Karrenbauer's secure position was not created out of enthusiasm; rather, Merz's candidate was deliberately rejected in order to give the chair to a party loyalist from the old Merkel wing. Once again, Merz and his people did not see the defeat coming and lacked the strength to prevail.
Conspicuous silence from internal party rivals
In times of crisis, it is always interesting to observe who jumps in to help when the going gets tough. Other powerful men in the party, some of whom have large party associations behind them or even govern as minister presidents, are conspicuously silent during Friedrich Merz's crises. While the Chancellor is struggling to secure majorities in the party and also in votes in the Bundestag, party colleagues such as Minister Presidents Hendrik Wüst and Daniel Günther are failing to support him with their demonstrative silence. Help in times of need looks different. Wüst, who successfully governs his federal state in a silent coalition with the Greens, has ambitions of his own to succeed Merz as Chancellor. It almost seems as if North Rhine-Westphalia is watching with glee as Merz dismantles himself – only to then position itself when he lies wounded on the ground.
Meanwhile, not even those in the party who once desperately wanted Merz as chancellor still have any hope for a political change in Germany under his leadership. In those federal states that are facing state elections next year, there is great concern among CDU officials. With what arguments can they win the trust of voters in the states and municipalities that this time they will definitely keep their word after the election, when the federal party under Friedrich Merz is breaking one election promise after another?
The policies coming out of Berlin are having an impact on the CDU's poll ratings in the states. Local CDU associations will soon pay for Merz's failure with election defeats at the state level. The AfD does not even have to campaign for votes in eastern Germany at the moment; disappointed Union voters are literally flocking to them.
And so, the conclusion for Germany in 2025 is clear: a huge majority of Germans would not hesitate to bring the German combustion engine back into business if they could. Friedrich Merz, on the other hand, would not even be nominated as chancellor candidate by his own party again.
