This time, the race was short-lived. It is Friedrich Merz who will represent the conservative Christian Democratic Party in the German federal elections in the autumn of 2025. At 68, Angela Merkel’s eternal rival, with his austere physique and sharp face, finally has a clear path to run for chancellor on behalf of the conservative party, now the favourite in the polls.
The other two contenders had in fact quickly withdrawn to make way for the man who had assumed, at the beginning of 2022, the double presidency of the CDU at the federal level and of the conservative parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The leader of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, 49, announced on Monday 16 September that he would no longer be competing. And above all Marcus Söder, head of the powerful state of Bavaria, more popular than Merz but less consensual within the party, who formalised his support during a joint press conference in Berlin on Tuesday 17 September.
Merz’s appointment, expected after the regional elections in Brandenburg on Sunday 22 September, was announced early to avoid the internal struggles that penalised candidate Armin Laschet in 2021. The conservatives wanted to present a functioning organisation to face the Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, should he run again, during the autumn elections of 2025.
The “ideal candidate”
In fact, it is a party united by the defeat of 2021 and united behind its candidate who will launch the campaign. For two and a half years, “Friedrich Merz shaped the party by evolving its ideological basis, says Uwe Jun, professor of political science at the University of Trier (Rhineland-Palatinate)The CDU is more conservative than it was in the Merkel era on social issues, particularly on immigration and gender issues, and more liberal on economic issues. Friedrich Merz is therefore the ideal candidate to lead this programme, which is more like what the CDU was before Merkel..
Breaking with Angela Merkel’s legacy has been one of Friedrich Merz’s goals since he took over the party in 2022. Both for ideological reasons – some conservatives have criticised the chancellor for having pursued a policy too close to that of the Social Democrats – and for her decision to open up. The treatment of refugees during the war in Syria remains highly controversial in the country. And, no doubt, also partly for personal reasons, since Angela Merkel systematically removed Merz from power since 2002.
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