Trust in Germany’s political establishment is not just waning—it is collapsing. Friedrich Merz, poised to become Germany’s next chancellor, has achieved the remarkable feat of being called a liar before he has even been officially appointed by parliament.
A recent poll provides a damning indictment of his political manoeuvring: 73% of respondents—including 44% of his own CDU supporters—believe he has deceived voters. In eastern Germany, entire local CDU associations have resigned from the party, with one group’s letter of resignation capturing the raw sentiment: “We feel betrayed by you and look to Germany’s future with even more trepidation than during the previous coalition.”
This level of disillusionment is unprecedented in post-war German politics. It stems from a technocratic style of government that is fundamentally bankrupt—devoid of vision and principle, and driven by a singular obsession: to suppress populist challenges.
Calling Merz a liar may seem harsh because, in truth, he has never hidden his authoritarian anti-populist stance. Although he has presented himself as something of an anti-establishment rebel, opposing the green-left consensus that has governed the country so poorly in recent years, he has consistently been committed to excluding the right-populist AfD.
Last October, he brazenly declared: “There is no longer a left-wing majority in Germany, but a theoretical right-of-centre majority. But we say quite clearly: we will not cooperate with the AfD. If you want a change of course, you have to vote for the CDU and CSU”.
Unsurprisingly, this strategic attempt to win back disgruntled populist voters by promising their exclusion backfired spectacularly. In the February election, Merz’s CDU scraped into first place with a meagre 28.5% of the vote, while the ‘hated’ AfD doubled its share to 20%. Instead of securing a comfortable majority, Merz found himself desperately seeking a coalition partner. Standing by his earlier pledge to rule out any cooperation with the AfD, Merz quickly announced a coalition with the SPD—the former governing party that had lost the election so spectacularly.
Since then, his political manoeuvring has revealed a stark disconnect between campaign promises and post-election realities. On the campaign trail, he promised a ‘180-degree turn’ on asylum policy and permanent border controls in response to a series of deadly attacks, many committed by rejected asylum seekers. But almost immediately after the election, his rhetoric shifted dramatically: “None of us are talking about closing the borders. Nobody! Even if that was perhaps claimed at times during the election campaign. But none of us want to close the borders,” he trumpeted.
When confronted with the possibility of having misled voters, Merz resorted to semantic gymnastics. Fact-checkers rushed to his defence, arguing that he had only promised to ‘’secure’ the German border, not to ‘close’ it—a distinction that has done little to quell growing voter frustration.
The true depth of Merz’s political expediency was revealed in his approach to defence and debt reform. During the election campaign, he positioned himself as a staunch advocate of fiscal austerity and of Germany’s constitutional ‘debt brake.’ In February, just after the elections, he still declared emphatically: “It is out of the question that we will reform the debt brake in the near future.” Yet in early March, he pushed through a law to borrow billions to boost Germany’s crumbling infrastructure and its failing army, using a strategy that has raised serious questions about his understanding of democratic representation.
His tactical maneuver was calculated and controversial. Knowing that the AfD and the Left Party—significant electoral gainers—would oppose his plans, Merz chose to rush the vote through the outgoing parliament before the new parliament convened on March 25th. The result was a legislative sleight of hand: MPs who had lost electoral support were able to decide on far-reaching changes while newly elected representatives were summarily excluded.
In his eagerness to win the support of the Greens—which he also needed for his two-thirds majority—to reform the debt brake, Merz went even further. He agreed to allocate billions to a climate fund and pushed through a commitment to make Germany carbon neutral by 2045, enshrining the goal in the constitution.
All this has made a mockery of the voters’ desire for change. Merz’s approach is also not without historical irony. Arguments over the debt brake had previously led to the collapse of the despised coalition led by Olaf Scholz (SPD). In the autumn of 2023, Germany’s highest court had blocked attempts to circumvent the brake and use COVID-19 emergency funds to plug budget gaps—a ruling that Merz and his CDU had enthusiastically supported at the time.
It has become very clear that Merz will do everything to uphold the old status quo. He is not the force for change that many had hoped for. Pleasing his potential coalition partner has taken precedence over satisfying voters’ will—even the will of his own CDU voters.
Economically, Merz is counting on the stimulus of new debt. He hopes that there will be substantial financial investment that will boost the German economy. He may also be speculating that voter anger will dissipate before the next election cycle. Given that many of Germany’s problems are in fact structural, it is more than doubtful that this strategy will succeed.
But it’s the wider implications that are most worrying. The German establishment seems to have reached a point where, in its quest to combat populism, maintaining the facade of democratic responsiveness is no longer even deemed necessary. The question remains: How far will they go to marginalize and combat populist sentiments?
