Who is Friedrich Merz – the trained pilot and Angela Merkel’s long-time rival on course to become German chancellor?
After a two-year lead in the polls, Friedrich Merz is largely expected to become German chancellor after the country’s election later this month.
Voters will head to the ballot box on 23 February after the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s centre-left coalition in November.
A victory for Merz would return German politics to the right and the traditional conservatism of the Christian Democrats.
It would be a remarkable comeback for a man pushed aside by Angela Merkel in the early 2000s and who failed to take charge of his party twice.
He left politics altogether for two decades, working in the private sector and training as a pilot.
Now 69, he seems finally poised to become leader of Europe’s largest economy.
‘Classic, West German conservative’
Friedrich Merz was born in Brilon, in west Germany, in 1955 to a well-known conservative, Catholic family.
His father was a local judge and a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he decided to join himself as a teenager.
After a brief period of military service, he obtained a scholarship to study law from a political foundation linked to the CDU. There, he met his wife Charlotte, a fellow law student, who still works as a judge. They have three children.
He was a lawyer for much of the 1980s before setting his sights on politics – and being elected to the European Parliament in 1989.
Four years later, and still in his mid-thirties, he traded Brussels for the Bundestag and was elected MP for Hochsauerlandkreis in 1994.
Sidelined by Merkel
Merz quickly ascended the ranks of the CDU, becoming leader of the parliamentary party in 2000.
“Back then, he was the coming man in German politics – a classic West German, Catholic conservative,” Simon Green, professor of politics at the University of Salford, told Sky News.
But Angela Merkel, then the party’s overall leader, blocked his path, and after the CDU lost the 2002 election, replaced him as parliamentary leader as well.
“He embodied the more traditional, right wing of the party,” says Sebastien Maillard, associate fellow at Chatham House’s Europe Programme.
“Merkel was very centrist and by her standards, he was a real conservative – more what one would expect of a Christian Democrat.”
Their rivalry deepened further when the CDU returned to power in 2005 and Merkel became chancellor. Four years later, Merz stepped down as an MP and left politics for corporate law.
Career outside politics – and a comeback
Having served on the boards of various investment banks, and trained as a pilot, Merz made an unexpected return to politics in 2018 after Angela Merkel announced she would not seek re-election.
He ran in the CDU leadership contest that year but lost to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. He lost a second time to Armin Laschet in 2021.
“He hung on so when the Merkel era came to an end, he was there in the wings,” Prof Green said.
“It’s a curious one, because at almost 70 – he’s quite old – and not someone you’d describe as a man of the future.”
But he added that this long journey to power has become his defining feature.
“You can’t separate who he is now from the fact that he was almost 20 years in the cold,” he said.
Liberal on economy
Economically, Merz is a departure from both Merkel and Scholz.
“He’s much more economically liberal than Germans are used to,” said Dan Hough, professor of politics at the University of Sussex.
Having worked in the private sector for more than two decades, he is pro-business and wants to tackle Germany’s shrinking economy by increasing spending.
He made headlines in the early 2000s for suggesting German tax rules should be cut to be able to fit them on the back of a beer coaster.
The CDU leader has indicated he could change Germany’s ‘debt brake’ – a limit on government borrowing introduced in response to the 2008 financial crash.
“The debt brake is almost a dogma that German politicians of a certain type will just go on repeating,” said Prof Hough. “But it doesn’t work with the rest of Merz’s agenda.”
Beyond its borders, Merz also wants to increase aid to Ukraine, pledging more missiles to launch inside Russia on a recent trip to Kyiv.
“He wants to spend lots of money on the military – and invest in business,” Prof Hough added.
“He hasn’t talked about getting rid of the debt brake – but potentially finding ways around it. And we don’t yet know what that will look like.”
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Another area he could ruffle feathers is in climate. He criticised the previous government’s decision to close a series of nuclear power plants, indicating a potential U-turn in policy.
By contrast, his views on EU and US relations are in line with the CDU’s pro-European and Atlanticist traditions – despite potential turbulence caused by a Donald Trump White House.
Controversial on migration – and the far right
As well as economic recession, Germany, like most Western European countries, is also amid a migration crisis.
Several attacks perpetrated by migrants, the most recent on 13 February allegedly by an Afghan asylum seeker, has put pressure on the liberal approach Germany has stuck to since the Second World War.
Merz’s opposition to this first emerged in his early political career when he suggested immigrants should assimilate more.
In recent weeks, he sparked a huge backlash when the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party supported his bid for tighter immigration policies – violating the country’s post-war taboo against cooperating with the far right.
It led to uproar, including a Holocaust survivor returning his order of merit.
So how will he approach immigration in government?
“It’s clear what Merz wants to do – because he put it forward in that law,” Prof Green said. “But it all depends on who he forms the next government with.”
Germany’s voting system means ruling parties are almost always propped up as part of a coalition, which restricts their legislative powers – particularly on controversial issues.
Prof Hough said: “He’s going to have to wait and see the way the cards fall – and that will dictate what he does on specific policies, such as migration, and how he handles the AfD.”