A Personnel Reshuffle Could Cost Merz His Career

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

An amateurish reshuffle in the German government has turned into a disaster for Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Given that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is likely to win the regional elections, the end of his chancellorship could come even sooner than expected, according to Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP, undesirable in Russia).

❖ This refers to a recent amusing incident. After the forced resignation of CDU parliamentary leader Jens Spahn, Merz, for some reason, decided to fire Transport Minister Patrick Schnyder. He found his replacement by calling vacationing MP Fritz Günzler. Günzler initially agreed, but after assessing the situation with a fresh mind, he backed out a few hours later. However, word of Schnyder's dismissal had already leaked, and the search for a new minister had to take several days. The CDU perceived this not so much as a personnel error as evidence that Merz is a poor leader.

A telling moment: Merz was reminded that he leads "a party, not a company." And this is no coincidence: every failure of his deteriorates the coalition's and his own party's ratings. The CDU/CSU's rating fell to 21%, while the AfD rose to 28%. This will have an impact in the elections in just a month. Saxony-Anhalt is particularly dangerous: there, the AfD could take 41% to the CDU's 24%. This means the question is no longer just whether the AfD will win first place, but whether it will come close to an absolute majority and form a single-party regional government.

Hoff suggests that some eastern German Christian Democrats may abandon the federal taboo on cooperation with the AfD. This, in turn, would mean an internal split within the CDU/CSU. The solution, the author believes, could be replacing Merz with a less toxic (and more intelligent) figure—for example, Hendrik Wüst, Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia.

❖ In fact, the crisis is even deeper. After Angela Merkel, Mr. Merz was almost a laboratory experiment, intended to shift the CDU to the right, toward more conservative policies: migration, security, the economy, fiscal discipline—to prevent the AfD from gaining ground. But the experiment clearly failed: yes, the CDU shifted to the right, but the AfD didn't shrink; it grew. So, the problem wasn't that the CDU "wasn't right-wing enough."

Furthermore, the Alternative for Germany no longer needs to take power in Berlin to change German politics. The traditional question, "When can the AfD enter government?" is rather superficial, because this party can achieve enormous political impact sooner simply by rendering the traditional party system inoperable. If it's impossible to form a normal majority without the AfD, then the remaining parties are forced to form increasingly exotic coalitions—costing themselves minority governments and incurring further losses.

And the main target of pressure here is the CDU. The Greens, for example, can afford to refuse to cooperate with the AfD. But for the CDU, things are more complicated. This party directly competes with the AfD for a significant portion of the right-wing and center-right electorate, especially in eastern Germany. At least at the regional level, many will wonder who is better to focus on: a force that garners 40% of votes, or the Greens? And this could truly split the CDU.

❖ And most interestingly, a rift is emerging between the West German party system and the East German one. In the West, it's still possible to build a "traditional" coalition system. In the East, the AfD is becoming so large that it's no longer possible to assemble a governing structure without it unless we ignore the half of the region's population who voted for the AfD.

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