Curator Friedrich Merz was invested this Tuesday, May 6 by the German Bundestag as a new Chancellier to succeed Olaf Scholz.
The Curator Friedrich Merz is the new German Chancellor. He was elected this Tuesday, May 6, in the second round, by German deputies of the Bundestag. A few hours earlier, he had failed to be elected in the first ballot, a sign of the immense pressure that is confronted with the one who is preparing to lead a country weakened by crises.
Such failure for a Chancellor candidate was unprecedented in the post-war political history of Germany, illustrating the fragility of the Christian Democrat.
In a completely unexpected scenario, the elected official of 69 had not obtained the required majority of 316 votes – he only collected 310 – in the first ballot on the part of the 630 Bundestag elected officials, the lower room of the Parliament.
Arrived at the top of the legislative elections at the end of February, Friedrich Merz, who has already sealed an alliance with the center-left SPD party, was finally elected an absolute majority to his second attempt, with 325 votes out of a total of 630 deputies.
“Anti-me-me
Born on November 11, 1955, Friedrich Merz made his politics in the 1980s by being elected European deputy, then a member of the German Bundestag. After exercising a short presidency of the CDU/CSU conservative block, he was ousted by Angela Merkel in 2002.
The “anti-merkel” label will always stick to his skin, as his failure to climb to the top of German policy will be attributed to that which was Chancellor of 2005 to his resignation in 2021.
Multimillionaire and novice
Friedrich Merz turns away from politics to devote himself to his business of a business lawyer and occupies positions of responsibility in businesses such as the German HSBC, the Swiss Focillary Equipment Constructor Stadler or the giant of the BlackRock investment funds.
Multimillionaire and liberal convinced, he then ensures that he was not “rich”, but belonging to the “upper middle class”, he explained to the daily Bild in 2018. This has since earned him criticism from the left.
-Despite a very long political career, Friedrich Merz has never governed, neither as minister, nor even as mayor. He would therefore be the first novice among German Chancellors.
European convinced
Former MEP, Friedrich Merz continued throughout his political career to defend Europe and Franco-German relations. It was also in France that he had to take his first official visit on Wednesday, May 7. Because relations between Paris and Berlin have been notoriously fresh in recent years.
Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz displayed opposite temperaments, omnipresent for one, silent for the other. And Paris hardly concealed its impatience to open a new page within a historically essential Franco-German couple for the European Union.
At the newspaper Le Monde, he explained that he would spend “60 to 70 % of his time to European questions” during his first year to the Chancellery. “The European Union awaits us,” he wrote again on X on Monday, May 5.
Flirt with AFD
The lawyer by training also flirted with the AFD right extreme party by voting with him a resolution on migration at the Bundestag last January. This unprecedented maneuver since the post-war period, which cost him votes in the elections, had caused major protest demonstrations in the country. He has since said to exclude all cooperation despite the exhortations of Trump and his relatives.
But he has not hesitated in the past to use a similar rhetoric on migrants, dealing with “small pachas” of alleged young thugs and denouncing a “social tourism” in Germany from Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian bombs.
Friedrich Merz had promised a clear right -wing turn, including hardening of migratory rules. From his election at the head of the CDU in 2022, he announced a complete reversal of the generous reception policy inherited from Angela Merkel (2005-2021).
Whoever promised to “give back his pride” to Germany will also have to find the parade to resolve the deep crisis of the industrial model crossed by the country.
