Who is Friedrich Merz, the favorite to become Germany’s new chancellor?

Friedrich Merz, migration hardliner and longtime rival of Angela Merkel, is expected to become Germany’s next chancellor. His party the Christian Democratic Union is leading polls alongside its affiliate the Christian Social Union just days before the election.

Back in September, Merz was elected as the CDU’s party’s designated candidate for chancellor in this year’s federal elections, after leading the organization and heading the opposition CDU-CSU parliamentary group since 2022. The CSU is a regional party which has dominated Bavarian politics for decades and forms a union with the CDU at a federal level.

Before entering politics, Merz, 69, studied law and first worked as a judge, then as a lawyer at Mayer Brown LLP. He has also held senior positions at various major corporations, including BlackRock Germany and HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt, as well as serving on the boards of EY Germany, Borussia Dortmund and the Deutsche Börse.

Merz is married with three children. He reportedly owns two airplanes, which he pilots in his spare time.

Merz says that he joined the CDU when he was still in school, eventually leading the local branch of the party’s youth organization. In 1989 he took on the role of member of the European Parliament for a five-year tenure before joining Germany’s Bundestag for 15 years.

Much of Merz’s political career in the early 2000s was marked by a rivalry with Angela Merkel, with the two vying for leadership positions in the CDU as well as of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Merz first became chair and then deputy head of the latter group after 2000.

He resigned from this position in 2004, with observers at the time suggesting this was due to Merkel’s rise through the ranks.

Tensions between Merkel and Merz linger to this day, with the former German chancellor last month criticizing the CDU leader for cooperating with the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland on parliamentary votes.

Merz, like the CDU, follows center-right policy positions and is seen as a socially conservative, pro-business politician.

Merz has advocated for lowering taxes on incomes and for corporations, alongside cutting bureaucratic red tape to boost businesses and innovation and adapting the framework conditions for industry in Germany to boost private investment. He has also shared his goal to make Germany more attractive for startups and has said that he would create a new ministerial role to focus on digitalization and AI.

The CDU leader has also indicated that he would potentially be open to reforming Germany’s highly contested debt brake rule, which limits how much debt the government can take on and restricts the federal government’s structural budget deficit.

Merz has been highly critical of economic policies under Olaf Scholz’ government, suggesting that they are the cause of the country’s slump and calling for big shifts.

This stance has included criticism about economic policies focusing too much on climate change, which Merz says he will change. While he broadly recognizes the climate crisis as an issue, Merz has been skeptical about some actions taken to tackle it, for example building wind turbines.

On the foreign policy front, Merz suggested during last weekend’s Munich Security Conference that Germany should take on a stronger leadership position within the Europe and said that the war in Ukraine must soon come to an end, while indicating that he would be open to further weapon deliveries to the embattled country.

Merz has however broadly dodged questions about plans for Germany’s defense spending amid the debate about whether NATO members should boost their funding in this area.

A policy issue that has gotten Merz into hot water is immigration. He has advocated for heightened security measures, increased deportations and shaper border controls, criticizing Germany’s current asylum and migration policies for being too relaxed and slow moving and linking them to violent attacks carried out in the country by people due to be deported.

The situation came to a head in January, when a non-binding motion spearheaded by Merz was backed by the AfD — marking the first time in Germany’s post-war history that a majority was achieved with the help of the far right.