Who is Friedrich Merz, set to be next Chancellor of Germany

Germany election results: Friedrich Merz leads CDU/CSU to victory in German election, while AfD doubles support; Merz vows to fight bureaucracy.

Germany’s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz won a victory in a national election on Sunday (February 23, 2025), while Alternative for Germany doubled its support in the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, projections showed

Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance won at least 28.5%, said the first exit polls from two public broadcasters, crushing the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) of the outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which were looking at around 16%.

Mr. Merz Germany’s 69-year-old opposition leader has been the front-runner in the election campaign, with his centre-right Union bloc leading polls. He became the leader of his Christian Democratic Union party after longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel — a former rival — stepped down in 2021.

Mr. Merz has taken his party in a more conservative direction. In the election campaign, he has made curbing irregular migration a central issue. Mr. Merz lacks experience in government. He joined the European Parliament in 1989 before becoming a lawmaker in Germany five years later. He took a break from active politics for several years after 2009, practicing as a lawyer and heading the supervisory board of investment manager BlackRock’s German branch.

Friedrich Merz -- who once famously argued a tax return should fit onto a beer coaster -- has vowed to go to war against the “bureaucracy monster”.

Mr. Merz and others want to free companies from national and EU reporting obligations, especially the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, that they regard as headache-inducing as its German tongue twister name, the “Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz”.

Mr. Merz continues to insist, despite relying on the AfD’s support in a parliamentary vote last month, that he would never form a coalition with the anti-immigration party.