It may be a low bar, but some of the ideas put forward by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are an improvement on those of Angela Merkel.
It may be a low bar, but some of the ideas put forward by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are an improvement on those of Angela Merkel, the previous chairwomen of CDU/CSU. After pointing out that “nothing” would be the easiest thing for Merz to do, the Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Sternberg notes that the chancellor is trying to take some small steps toward deregulation and lower taxes. By German standards, Merz is a free marketeer, but he governs in a coalition with the left-of-center Social Democratic Party (SPD). The maintenance of a “firewall” against the populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the failure of the free-market(ish) Free Democratic Party (FDP) to make it back into parliament at the last election meant that an ideologically absurd (post-Merkel) coalition with the SPD was the only way to go.
And:
Germany’s deranged net-zero climate policies remain so deeply entrenched in the country’s political psyche that they’re all but omitted from last week’s reform package. Were Berlin to abandon this nonsense, the elimination of climate mandates would stimulate a revenue-swelling industrial boom while easing the burden subsidies impose on the fisc. For as long as voters remain unwilling to contemplate this reform, what they’ll get instead is the confusing and inadequate option presented last week.
The AfD, interestingly, does oppose net-zero. And the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — the populist “horseshoe” party that might (it’s rocky) give it the help it needs to form a minority government after its victory in Saxony-Anhalt — is not enthusiastic about it either. Overall, polls seem to indicate that support for net-zero is fraying, and there is widespread skepticism that Germany will achieve it by 2045 (five years ahead of the target set by the EU, another legacy of the Merkel years).
There are two more sets of German regional elections this Sunday: one in Berlin and, more interesting from the chancellor’s point of view, one in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, another state that was once in East Germany. It is currently run by the SPD in coalition with the far-left (ahem) Die Linke. According to one recent poll, the SPD were a percentage point or two behind the AfD. However, they may be saved by the popularity of their leader, the state premier. Time will tell. Merz, however, will also be focused on how the AfD does against his party, the CDU. In the last state election, back in 2021, the AfD and CDU both lost ground, but the AfD was confirmed as the larger of the two (16.7 percent vs. 13.3 percent). Since then, the AfD has left the CDU trailing, and the same poll cited above showed it to be comfortably ahead (37 percent–7 percent). Should the AfD win, or should the CDU fall below the threshold (5 percent) needed to get into the state parliament, that could add to the growing discontent in the CDU about the deeply unpopular chancellor’s leadership.
Merz probably has not helped himself by following Merkel’s pro-censorship line. He has reiterated his support for mandatory “real name” registration online and recently denied that this had anything to do with free speech. That, he maintained, was “at best” a “libertarian understanding of politics” from parts of the U.S., which he does not share. He argued that a “liberal society must be able to protect its citizens,” including “from false information, from personal attacks, from discrimination.”
And who decides which is the “false” information from which a supposedly “liberal” society must “protect” its citizens? Authoritarian paternalism of this type goes quite some way to explain the rise of the AfD. The CDU still has a way to go before it has adequately distanced itself from the disasters of the Merkel years.