Following this months’ three regional election defeats – two of which were historic routs for the CDU – in Eastern Germany in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Pomeria and Berlin, a large number of press reports have suggested that the days of Friedrich Merz as German chancellor are numbered, as his own party will feel that “something must be done” about their deeply unpopular leader.
This, however, due to a number of reasons remains a highly unlike outcome, and the base case remains that Friedrich Merz remains German chancellor until the end of his term in 2029, but is not his party’s candidate for another term. Unlike with Joe Biden, the CDU will not take the risk of putting an old unpopular leader up for reelection.
First of all, it is by constitutional design difficult to get rid of a German chancellor. Germany is quite different in that regard from for instance the U.K., where a governing party can simply decide on its own to quickly change an unpopular leader and install a new prime minister. In Germany, three avenues exist to change a chancellor, all of which are highly unlikely to be taken:
1) The chancellor resigns, and a majority of all members in the German Bundestag then selects a new chancellor. This happened in Germany in 1974, when Helmuth Schmidt became chancellor upon Willy Brandt’s resignation. Given the Friedrich Merz tried three times to become German chancellor before succeeding and that he has therefore unsurprisingly ruled out resigning early, this looks an unlikely option. It is also worth recalling that the CDU-SPD coalition majority in the Bundestag is slim, and there is hence no guarantee that a “positive majority” can be found for a replacement for Friedrich Merz.
2) A “constructive vote of no confidence” is taken and it is revealed that an alternative majority exists in the Bundestag for a new governing coalition. This happened in Germany in 1982, when the FDP switched allegiances from the SPD to the CDU and Helmuth Kohl became new chancellor. There is however in the Bundestag today essentially no real option to form an alternative governing coalition with a majority behind it, unless say the Greens were to join the existing CDU-SPD coalition, an outcome that would be both politically very difficult and serve no real purpose.
3) A confidence vote is called in the government of Friedrich Merz and lost, following which new elections are called by the German President. Given that the CDU has just suffered dramatic electoral setbacks, it seems simply implausible that the party would insist on new elections being called at this point in time, even if they first choose another candidate for chancellor. There would, based on current polls, be only a very small chance that another two-party coalition led by the CDU could be formed in a newly elected Bundestag.
Secondly, the CDU has no obvious replacement for Friedrich Merz at this point in time. The most frequently mentioned alternative is the CDU state premier of Nordrhein-Westphalia (NRW) Hendrik Wüst. Yet, Wüst has his own regional NRW elections in April 2027, and as such is not really a politically credible candidate for chancellor until he has proven that he can win elections in the current political climate in Germany. Obviously, if he does not remain state premier in April 2027, his candidacy for chancellor is de facto over, even if such a future further regional electoral loss for the CDU would also put even more pressure on Friedrich Merz.
Moreover, Wüst has so far very clearly refrained from publicly stepping forward as an alternative to Friedrich Merz, choosing not to reveal a possibly needed “political killer instinct” if you want a chance for the top job. There are likely several reasons for this course of action by Wüst – he understands that he must first fight and win his own elections next Spring, and he reportedly likes his current life in NRW. More importantly, he is also completely untested on foreign policy issues, certain to dominate Germany’s political agenda in the coming years. He is hence likely to willingly let Friedrich Merz deal with the war in Ukraine, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping for the next couple of years.
Markus Söder, the CSU premier of Bavaria is also sometimes mentioned as a possible replacement for Friedrich Merz. His problem, however, is that the CSU is just the “regional CDU party” in Bavaria, and the national CDU party is traditionally unwilling to cede the top job in Berlin to their regional partners. Söder further lacks a truly national German political platform, and his Bavarian style of “respectable populism” may not play well among voters in other German regions. In short, he is also not a credible candidate for chancellor at this moment for a party already in severe political difficulties.
Without a politically easy path to “switching chancellors” and with no obviously appealing alternative candidate, the CDU is therefore likely to stick with Friedrich Merz, most likely until the end of the current term in 2029. This may not be politically optimal in the short-run, but represents the least bad path forward for the CDU. It also offers Germany the best chance of maintaining a relatively high degree of political stability through 2027, when the other four large members of the EU – France, Italy, Spain and Poland – all have national elections. The political threshold for fomenting a possible political crisis in Germany just to change the chancellor during Europe’s Super Election Year is likely to be even higher than usual.
Lastly, there is the question of what a new CDU chancellor would do differently from Friedrich Merz to please German voters? It seems implausible that any new CDU chancellor would abandon Ukraine, give up on German rearmament and public investments, or dramatically shift Germany’s broader position in the EU and other foreign policy fora. A new chancellor might want to abandon Friedrich Merz’s (limited) structural reform drive in Germany, especially regarding pension and healthcare reforms.
But the political question would then be, what the CDU’s policy platform would be in the next scheduled elections in 2029? It seems clear that Merz will seek to accommodate German voter current concerns about high fuel prices through some sort of – fiscally affordable for Germany – short-term government spending, and other elements of the governing coalition’s reform program may be tweaked at the margins. But staying the course in general is likely to be the policy path chosen.
In sum, the CDU is likely to stick with the current chancellor Friedrich Merz, even if he essentially is a “grumpy old man” with evident plitical communication challenges and associated very low personal popularity scores among German voters. This will guarantee a relatively high degree of political and policy stability in Germany through what looks to be a tumultuous 2027 in the EU. Then eventually, as the next elections approach in 2029, the CDU will find a new leader to present to German voters.
Jacob
