BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is sporting a new look.
Dressed in a sharp suit and dark sunglasses, black leather briefcase in hand, he cuts the figure of a no-nonsense, hard-charging Reformkanzler — a “chancellor of reforms” who gets things done. At least that’s how he’s depicted in the curated image promoted by his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The Reformkanzler campaign is part of Merz’s broader effort to convince voters he is delivering the sweeping reforms he has long promised to revive Germany’s economy and counter the growing pessimism many Germans feel about their country’s future — a malaise that has helped drive the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which now leads in national polls.
Merz has spent recent months trying to lock in reform agreements within his coalition ahead of parliament’s summer recess, beginning Friday — and ahead of September’s state elections in eastern Germany, where the AfD is close to capturing at least one state parliament. The goal is to show German voters that his ideologically-divided coalition of conservatives and center-left Social Democrats is dynamic enough to make the hard choices needed to turn things around.
“Time and again, I hear the accusation that the political center isn’t delivering, that it only obstructs and blocks its own progress,” Merz said during a speech in Germany’s Bundestag on Thursday. “Let me respond in no uncertain terms: The center does deliver,” he added.
“The answers offered by radical parties — whether from the left or the right — may sound tempting, but they do not build, they destroy,” Merz went on. “They divide our country and, should they assume political responsibility in Germany, would lead it into the abyss.”
By some measures, the chancellor has been notably successful. Coalition leaders have in recent weeks struck agreements on a series of overhauls to the pension, tax and health insurance schemes meant in large part to bring down costs for employees, reforms business leaders have long demanded to make the country more economically competitive.
Many of the changes represent the kind of grinding overhauls previous governments have avoided because they involve unpopular measures like increasing the retirement age and cutting some health insurance benefits, and in that sense, they are arguably the stuff of mundane, responsible governance.
But to many voters and some business leaders, the measures come across as incremental and anemic — hardly the kind of soaring promise of change that would stop the far right, which, unburdened by the realities of governing, is promising to bring political revolution to Germany.
In fact, the Merz reform that seems to have received the most attention — and stoked some of the greatest controversy — involves new rules intended to make it harder for employees to take sick days, part of his effort to get Germans to work longer hours.
AfD politicians, predictably, pounced on the sick leave proposal.
“Mr. Chancellor, once again it’s clear that you have absolutely no empathy, especially for the citizens,” Tino Chrupalla, the AfD’s national co-leader, said in the Bundestag Thursday. “You are full of mistrust and resentment toward the sick,” he went on before attacking Merz, who formerly worked for global asset manager BlackRock, as out of touch with regular people.
“Such inhumane proposals are put forward only by politicians who themselves have apparently never worked with their hands, but have only managed other people’s capital from the comfort of their executive chairs.”
The chancellor’s ‘deceptive packaging’
A simple reality drives Merz’s Reformkanzler campaign: he’s in deep political trouble.
Only 13 percent of Germans are satisfied with the chancellor’s work, according to the latest benchmark ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll released last week and conducted after some of the reform deals, including on pensions. That is the lowest rating for a sitting chancellor in the survey’s nearly 30-year history.
The survey also suggests most Germans are opposed to one of the key pillars of Merz’s pension reform: linking retirement age to life expectancy. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) said this was the wrong course.
Business leaders, too, said that while the reforms are a step in the right direction, they’re not nearly enough.
The recent measures are “a positive sign of the coalition’s shared commitment to reform and its ability to get things done, but not a powerful stimulus for growth,” Tanja Gönner, chief executive of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) lobby group, said in a statement.
Merz’s coalition also attempted to sweeten the deal for voters by agreeing to tax cuts for low and middle-income earners. But even here, promised relief may not be anywhere near enough to resonate with voters facing rising prices on homes, energy and food.
A working family with two children and a total taxable income of 60,000 euros could see its tax burden reduced by more than 600 euros annually, according to a coalition summary of the plan — and that is once it’s to be fully implemented in 2028.
The opposition Greens argued the tax cut falls far short and that any savings for families would be wiped out by increases to pension contributions. Katharina Beck, a Greens lawmaker on the Bundestag’s finance committee, likened the tax relief in an interview to “deceptive packaging” — like opening a bag of chips that’s only half full.
Katharina Dröge, co-leader of the Greens parliamentary group, pointed out that the Merz government’s reforms have only just been agreed on by coalition leaders, and still face a lengthy passage through the Bundestag, where they could encounter fresh hurdles.
In other words, she said, it was too soon for self-congratulation.
“The fact that you managed to walk out of a coalition committee meeting intact doesn’t deserve any applause,” Dröge said in the Bundestag Thursday. “That’s not an achievement for which you can praise yourself.”
Nette Nöstlinger contributed to this report.
