‘Policy change’: Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) prevailed in the German elections/Friedrich Merz X

By Peter Boehm

February 23, 2025

As ever, the Germans have a perfect word for the occasion that has no English equivalent: Zittersieg — a trembling, or nervous victory. For moderate Germans and many European leaders, the result of Sunday’s German election was, like France’s far-right near-miss, cause for celebration. But in this case, it is a Zittersieg with an asterisk.

Political veteran Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — the party founded by Konrad Adenauer in 1945 and led by Angela Merkel for nearly two decades — is set to become the next chancellor of Germany after an election that featured the largest voter turnout in 30 years.

But the big story is that the hard-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is celebrating its 20% showing as a victory (no “zitter” there) and the breadth of its support, particularly growing among young Germans, establishes the AfD as a strengthened bona fide political force at the federal level in Germany.

To Merz will fall the arduous task of constructing a governing coalition with the support/inclusion of other political parties, going beyond the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Party (CSU) to include the chastened Social Democrats of Olaf Scholz and likely the Green Party.

As was evident in the demise of the previous coalition and what led to the “snap” but pre-ordained election was the inability of the parties to agree on key economic and social policies. What is not clear is whether some of the smaller parties, particularly the Free Democratic Party (liberal), a member of the previous coalition government, will clear the 5% of total vote threshold required for representation in the Bundestag. Coalition-building could become all the more interesting.

Coalition building is nothing new in German politics as the country’s proportional representation electoral system, when pitted against the performance of its traditional political parties (CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP) guarantees that no single political party will win an outright majority for the Bundestag. So, coalitions are often described by party colours, a sort of shorthand that has crept into the German political vernacular. The last one was the “Ampel Koalition” (traffic light coalition…red, yellow and green), using other countries’ flags to describe party colour coalitions is even more fun. “Jamaica Koalition” has been seen at the German state level and the results of the current election appear to give promise to a “Kenya Koalition” (CDU, SPD, Green).

I recall the Jamaican ambassador during my time as ambassador in Berlin telling me that she was quite chuffed at the idea of a Jamaica coalition emerging following the 2009 elections. It never happened. There is always the prospect of another “Grosse Koalition” or “Groko” — grand coalition — between the CDU/CSU and SPD but an early assessment of the returns does not point in that direction. The bottom line on all this seemingly complex coalition building is the stated purpose, including from Merz, is to keep the AfD well out of any shared governance role.

The AfD did not exist during my time in Germany. There were protest parties and I recall the Piraten (Pirate) party as being akin to our now extinct Rhinoceros Party that featured in several Canadian elections before its symbolic leader Cornelius was traded from the Granby Zoo to the San Diego Zoo in exchange for a giraffe. In contrast, AfD is a serious challenger, initially attracting those who are anti-European Union, others who have gradually lost trust in state institutions due to inflation, the pandemic hangover and Germany’s active stance in favour of Ukraine.

When I left my post as ambassador, Merz hosted a farewell dinner for us in Berlin featuring a singer that serenaded the gathering with Neil Young songs (Friedrich had done his homework).

But the biggest factor — as is so often the case with far-right parties — appears to be immigration. AfD election rallies included calls for “re-migration”, that is the deportation of those who were in Germany illegally or were criminals — a transatlantic echo of Trumpism. Violent acts, including pedestrians run down by Muslim drivers in Magdeburg and Munich, contributed to a sense that this had become the defining issue in the election campaign. When AfD leader Alice Weidel publicly endorsed “re-migration” at a rally, those present chanted “Alice für Deutschland”, an intentional historical pun on “Alles (everything) für Deutschland” a slogan used during the Nazi period.

Elon Musk weighed in in favour of the AfD by interviewing Alice Weidel on his X platform and by addressing a rally where he called for putting an end to atonement for the mistakes of eighty years ago. US Vice-President JD Vance met with her on the margins of the recent Munich Security Conference while snubbing Chancellor Olaf Scholz and, in his controversial address to the conference, suggested that European countries had not properly addressed their internal threats, citing mass immigration — not the threat posed by Russia or China — as Europe’s major problem. It is not clear whether any of these utterances and the publicity given them really had an impact on the election results other than perhaps to galvanize voter turnout. With the exception of Weidel, German political leaders and pundits decried the Musk/Vance comments as electoral interference.

The AfD draws its strength from the states of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany, particularly Thuringia and Saxony. When the large arc of German history and that of the GDR is assessed, it will be clear that the atonement culture regarding Nazism and particularly the Holocaust did not form part of either the collective consciousness or conscience in the East, where Soviet propaganda didn’t leave much room for factual history, recent or otherwise.

The eastern states remain economically challenged despite significant budget transfers, infrastructure projects and investment from abroad. Demographically, far more immigrants have settled in the larger cities of western Germany than in the east, yet the presence of newcomers, their integration (or lack thereof) has seemingly engendered more public debate in the east. Younger Germans have moved to the western cities, where the jobs are. The nation-building project, thirty-six years after reunification, remains a work in progress.

Friedrich Merz and Angela Merkel’s CDU rivalry dates back to her election as leader in 2000/AP

“Wir schaffen das” (we can do it), Merkel said in 2015 as Germany developed its refugee policy to allow for the arrival in following years of millions of Syrians, Afghans and others seeking refuge. The most frequent question I received from politicians and the German media during my tenure in Berlin between 2008 and 2012 was about Canada’s immigration policies, both for refugees and more controlled (points system, family reunification) policies. I was also asked about how we conferred citizenship and how we manifested our “Willkommenskultur”, or welcoming culture. Laws governing immigration and citizenship have been achieved incrementally in Germany, with an all-encompassing law that also clarifies birthright and dual nationality just passed last year. Like other industrialized democracies, Germany requires migrants for economic reasons. As in other countries, including our own, the adroit management of migration policy will be a challenge for the next government.

Personalities matter in politics. I know Friedrich Merz from my time in Berlin and spoke with him briefly at the recent Munich Security Conference. He is outgoing, experienced, smart and a good listener. Merz speaks English and French, and likes Canada. He was on the losing end of a CDU leadership power struggle with Merkel years ago and spent over a decade as a corporate lawyer and board member of several companies. He served in the Bundestag and as a member of the European Parliament. He is well-connected, including with Republicans in the US, and is strongly supportive of the European project as well as NATO. When I met him, he was chair of the Atlantik Brũcke, an organization dedicated to furthering the trans-Atlantic relationship between Germany and the United States as well as Canada. When I left my post as ambassador, Merz hosted a farewell dinner for us in Berlin featuring a singer that serenaded the gathering with Neil Young songs (Friedrich had done his homework).

In addition to the arduous task of coalition building and keeping the AfD at bay, he will need to find ways to get Germany out of its economic recession, deal with immigration policy, climate change (an ongoing important issue for Germans particularly if the Greens become a coalition member) and defence spending. Most of all, he will need to manage the volatility of the Trump factor and how it will impact Germany: tariffs, the war in Ukraine, apparent American rapprochement with Russia and Germany’s leadership in Europe. To say it will be a challenging time for the new chancellor and his coalition government is an understatement.

The German novelist Bernhard Schlink (The Reader) has written a brilliant, at times heartbreaking new novel, The Granddaughter. It sets the German reunification story in a family across three generations, weaving a complicated tale of identity intersecting with history and national pride. He leaves the conclusion for readers to determine. So, too, with this election.

Our international rules-based system grew out of Germany’s turbulent history, our Allied war engagement and creative diplomacy to forge the postwar peace and the international structures that would support it. In his emotional speech at the closure of the Munich Security Conference, its Chair, Christoph Heusgen, referring to the speech of Vice-President Vance, saying, “I fear that our common value base is not that common anymore.” Here lies the challenge for all of us at this inflection point in international relations.

Policy contributing writer Sen. Peter M Boehm served as Canada’s ambassador to Germany from 2008-2012.