riedrich Merz has led a coalition of the CDU/CSU and the SPD as German chancellor for barely eight months. From the outset, his tenure was burdened with poor omens. A margin of just 9,500 votes secured him a narrow parliamentary majority. Immediately after the election, he jettisoned the inconvenient ballast of his election manifesto with the help of the Greens, elevating a gargantuan debt programme of half a trillion euros to constitutional status. When his election as chancellor failed in the first parliamentary vote, he even accepted the support of the Left Party alongside the Greens to correct this embarrassment.
Merz was not deterred by any of this. He set out ambitious goals. A new foreign, defence, and economic policy was intended to restore a weakened Germany (and, by extension, Merz himself) to the centre of power in Europe. Yet it has now become abundantly clear that Merz and his government lack any long-term strategy. He has never managed to overcome the congenital defects and inherent weakness of his administration, despite all the grand promises delivered at press conferences. As a result, his politics are geared solely toward short-term, day-to-day survival. To make matters worse, even the implementation of these already misguided objectives has been marked by sheer amateurism.
How Germany lost the Russian assets gamble
Two political stillbirths illustrate with striking clarity that neither his foreign policy nor his economic policy can succeed: first, the planned seizure of €210 billion in Russian assets held in Belgium; and second, the loudly announced but entirely hollow “autumn of reforms” that was supposed to put the German economy back on track.
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