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Merkel rival Merz in bid to succeed her as German chancellor

Friedrich Merz, a longtime rival of Angela Merkel within the ruling CDU party, is hoping to replace her as German chancellor, local media has reported.

Published: 13 February 2020 08:13 CET
Merkel rival Merz in bid to succeed her as German chancellor
Friedrich Merz wants the top job. Photo: DPA

Merz, who wants to shift the centre-right party further to the right, is throwing his hat into the ring after Merkel's chosen successor, CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, gave up her leadership ambitions on Monday in a deepening party crisis over ties between the centre and far right.

The next CDU leader will also be the party's candidate to become chancellor at elections due by the end of 2021.

With the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) still ahead in the opinion polls, he would be well placed to succeed Merkel as she steps down after 15 years in office.

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Merz, a 64-year-old lawyer, is preparing to stand in internal party elections expected in the coming months, the daily Bild and DPA news agency reported.

If he succeeds in becoming party leader it will become difficult for his rival Merkel to remain in power until her mandate ends next year. Early elections would become a distinct possibility.

Merz has never forgiven Merkel for driving him out as head of the party's group of MPs in the Bundestag in 2002.

He was narrowly beaten in the vote for party leader by Merkel's preferred successor Kramp-Karrenbauer in December 2018, and has been waiting in the wings ever since.

Return to full-time politics

He announced this month he was quitting his job on the supervisory board of the German arm of investment firm BlackRock to dedicate himself to politics and to helping the CDU “renew itself”.

In recent months Merz has attacked Merkel and her “failed” leadership.

Favoured by the CDU's most conservative members, Merz wants to shift the party to the right to woo back voters lost to the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant AfD.

Kramp-Karrenbauer opted out of the race after barely a year in the post – a period marked by internal battles over whether to cooperate with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).

AKK, as Kramp-Karrenbauer is popularly known, said she had had “a difficult time” as party leader.

While the CDU party has a policy of no cooperation with either the far left or far right at a national level, regional CDU lawmakers last week nevertheless voted with MPs from the AfD to oust a far-left state premier in Thuringia.

The breach in the political firewall against the AfD prompted Merkel's junior partners in the national government, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), to call urgent talks at the weekend about the partnership's future.

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POLITICS

‘Dexit’ would cost Germany ‘€690 billion and millions of jobs’

According to the German Economic Institute (IW), Germany's exit from the EU – the so-called Dexit – would cost millions of jobs and significantly reduce the country's prosperity.

Published: 19 May 2024 18:04 CEST
'Dexit' would cost Germany '€690 billion and millions of jobs'

In a study presented by the Cologne-based institute on Sunday, the authors showed that a Dexit would cause real GDP to drop by 5.6 percent after just five years. This means that Germany would lose 690 billion euros in value creation during this time.

In addition, Germany as an export nation is dependent on trade with other countries, especially with other EU countries, warned the authors. Companies and consumers in Germany would therefore feel the consequences “clearly” and around 2.5 million jobs would be lost.

The study is based on the consequences of Britain’s exit from the EU, such as the loss of trade agreements and European workers.

Taken together, the losses in economic output in Germany in the event of a Dexit would be similar to those seen during Covid-19 and the energy cost crisis in the period from 2020 to 2023, the authors warned.

Brexit is therefore “not an undertaking worth imitating,” warned IW managing director Hubertus Bardt. Rather, Brexit is a “warning for other member states not to carelessly abandon economic integration.”

Leader of the far-right AfD party Alice Weidel described Great Britain’s exit from the European Union at the beginning of the year as a “model for Germany.”

In an interview published in the Financial Times, Weidel outlined her party’s approach in the event her party came to power: First, the AfD would try to resolve its “democratic deficit” by reforming the EU. If this was not successful, a referendum would be called on whether Germany should remain in the EU.

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