Friedrich Merz, the victor of German elections in February is struggling even before he takes office.
Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) – the election losers – used coalition talks to ram through their policies in a 144-page pact to serve as junior partner to Merz’s Christian Democrats. The accord shies away from any big reforms of the economy, of the creaking social welfare state and even from the no-brainer of reinstating military conscription to help deter Russia.
The agreement is so bad and so dilutes the Economics Ministry’s powers that Merz’s own Christian Democratic (CDU) secretary general, Carsten Linnemann, abruptly declared he no longer wants to take over the portfolio. Linnemann will stay on in his post as the party’s Mann fürs Grobe, or hatchet man.With Germany probably now in a third year of recession, a weak economics minister will be Berlin’s whipping boy.
Conservative voters are drawing conclusions and flocking to the AfD, which came second to Merz’s Christian Democratic bloc (CDU/CSU) at the election. In a stunning development, the AfD has for the first time pulled ahead of the CDU/CSU and leads with 26 per cent to 25 per cent, according to an April 22 Forsa opinion poll.
‘There has never been such a loss of support in the period between the federal election and the formation of a government’, says Hermann Binkert, head of the INSA polling agency.
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