Friedrich Merz
- Born:
- November 11, 1955, Brilon, Germany (age 69)
- Political Affiliation:
- Christian Democratic Union
News •
Friedrich Merz (born November 11, 1955, Brilon, Germany) is a German lawyer, lobbyist, and politician who has served as leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party since 2022. With the CDU’s win in Germany’s February 2025 election, Merz was expected to become the country’s next chancellor.
Merz worked as a lawyer before entering politics. As a fledgling politician in the 1980s and ’90s, he represented many of the political characteristics of West Germany before German reunification: transatlanticist, business oriented, and socially conservative. Merz earned positions in the European Parliament (1989–1994) and the German Bundestag (1994–2009) as a Christian Democrat. In 2009-19, Merz was also chair of the Atlantic Bridge, a cross-party lobbying group that works with politicians and business leaders in Europe and the United States.
In 2009 Merz left the political sphere after a decades-long rivalry with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel. “There was one problem, right from the start,” Merkel wrote of their relationship in her 2024 memoir, Freedom. “We both wanted to be the boss.” Lacking a path forward with Merkel in power, Merz returned to law, working as a corporate lawyer, often internationally, at the law firm Mayer Brown and retaining the position of senior counsel until 2021. He also held a supervisory role at the German branch of investment firm BlackRock Inc. from 2016 to 2020.
Merz’s return to politics in 2018 was considered somewhat surprising. In 2025 the BBC recalled that Merz had been “written off as yesterday’s man”; Reuters described his comeback as an “unlikely third-act triumph” for someone who “just seven years ago was seen as a failed politician.” Der Spiegel noted that he had four principal concerns: migration, globalization, climate change, and digitalization. Although Merz announced his revived political ambitions in 2018, after Merkel said she would not seek another term as chancellor, he did not win a seat in the Bundestag until 2021, the same year Merkel’s chancellorship officially ended.
In 2022 Merz was elected leader of the Christian Democratic Union and of the party’s parliamentary group. He loudly differentiated his politics, and those of his party, from Merkel’s staunch centrism, continuing his long-term emphasis on Atlanticism (military cooperation between European powers and the United States) and advocating for increased limits on immigration. Merz argued that by becoming more conservative on issues such as immigration, the CDU could check the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which initially had attracted some of the more conservative members of Merkel’s voting bloc. When Merz failed to reject AfD support to pass a January 2025 anti-immigration measure, he was criticized by the country’s Die Linke party (“The Left”) for associating with the far right. Merz denied direct collaboration with AfD, reiterating that he “want[ed] to do politics so that a party like the AfD is no longer needed in Germany.”
On February 23, 2025, the CDU and allied Christian Social Union were victorious in an election with the highest voter participation since 1990. The CDU-CSU won 28.6 percent of the vote and 208 seats in the Bundestag. (AfD won 152 seats; the Social Democratic Party, 120; the Greens, 85; and Die Linke, 64.) With his party’s win Merz was poised to become Germany’s next chancellor as the CDU formed a coalition government over the next several months.
Even as he worked to form his coalition government, Merz turned his attention internationally, namely to address Europe’s relationship with the United States and Pres. Donald Trump. “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said. He also suggested that Europe and NATO may need to invest in new defensive structures, without the involvement of the United States.
