Published in Newsroom.co.nz (Wellington), 1 April 2025
Winning an election can still mean losing control. This paradox is playing out in Germany right now. The Christian Democrats under would-be Chancellor Friedrich Merz have squandered their election win with breathtaking efficiency.
The February 23 2025 election results presented a challenging political landscape. Merz’s centre-right CDU/CSU bloc won with 28.5 percent of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) followed at 20.8 percent. The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) limped in with a historically poor 16.4 percent, the Greens secured a meagre 11.6 percent and the far-left Die Linke a surprising 8.8 percent.
Translated into seats, this meant mainstream parties would lose their two-thirds majority in the new parliament. They would no longer be able to change the constitution alone. This had profound implications.
Before the election, Merz had defended Germany’s constitutional “debt brake” vigorously. This fiscal rule limits government borrowing and had been sacrosanct in German politics for over a decade.
Merz railed against the outgoing government’s spending and promised voters fiscal discipline. It was central to his campaign and the CDU’s identity as responsible economic managers.
Yet within days of victory, Merz abandoned these principles.
Shortly after the election, the CDU/CSU and SPD quickly entered exploratory talks (Sondierungen) against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s dramatic clash with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. It showed that Europe could no longer rely on American security guarantees.
Merz, alarmed by these developments, pressed for massive increases in defence spending. But it was the SPD that seized the moment. If Merz wanted his defence package, he would need to accept its demands for major spending initiatives in return.
Here Merz made his first tactical blunder. He negotiated exclusively with the SPD, overlooking the crucial fact that he would still need the Greens to achieve the required two-thirds majority in the outgoing parliament. The Greens, now aware of their leverage, would use this mistake to extract their own concessions later.
The German media aptly characterised Merz’s policy U-turn as a “historic policy reversal” and “voter deception”. Even within his own party, there was talk of “betrayal”.
What followed was a race against time. In Germany, the outgoing Bundestag remains in session for 30 days after the election. Remarkably, this transitional period even allows constitutional amendments, despite the limited time for debate.
This tight window played directly into the hands of the SPD and the Greens. They knew Merz’s opportunity would close quickly. Every day that passed increased their leverage. All they had to do was wait.
The outgoing parliament was summoned to implement what the incoming government desired. Yesterday’s losers were enabling tomorrow’s winners. Together they would circumvent the democratic outcome of the election.
The Social Democrats extracted its pound of flesh: a €500 billion infrastructure fund exempt from normal budget rules. Essentially a blank cheque for its spending priorities.
The Greens, seeing its moment had come, demanded and received a €100 billion climate package. But that was not all: it also secured the constitutional enshrinement of net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.
Ironically, in these few weeks of post-election horse-trading, the Greens achieved more of its agenda than during the entire time in the previous government. For a party that had just been punished at the polls, this was an extraordinary victory.
With these concessions already made, Merz found himself in a trap of his own making. Having given away his strongest bargaining chips before formal coalition talks even began, he now sits across from SPD negotiators who have little incentive to compromise.
The mathematics are clear. The CDU won almost twice as many votes as the SPD. Yet its influence over policy now appears inversely proportional to its electoral success. It is the SPD that has dictated terms to the election winner.
This imbalance is amplified by a lack of negotiating experience on Merz’s side. Despite his many years in politics, Merz has never participated in coalition negotiations. The SPD, by contrast, is hardened by years of coalition talks.
Consequently, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described Merz as a “plaything” of SPD demands, and Die Zeit noted his “lost credibility”.
Adding to Merz’s woes is the unprecedented transparency of the process. In a stunning breach of protocol, every draft document from the coalition negotiations has been leaked to the German media. What would normally occur behind closed doors is now playing out in full public view.
This exposure has been devastating to Merz. Germans can now observe, practically in real time, how Merz concedes point after point to his negotiating partners. They can track precisely which CDU positions are being abandoned and which SPD demands are prevailing.
Previous coalition talks may have suffered the occasional strategic leak, but this wholesale transparency is unheard of. It certainly hurts Merz, who finds his negotiating position further undermined with each new revelation.
Migration policy has become his last stand – the one area where he is trying to salvage something. Having campaigned on tougher border controls and accelerated deportations, he is pushing for a dramatic tightening of asylum rules.
Yet even here, the SPD is holding firm against the most stringent measures, now even questioning those measures they had agreed to in the preliminary talks straight after the election.
The German public has not missed this spectacular reversal. Recent polls show the AfD rising further to 24 percent, while the CDU/CSU has slipped. Three-quarters of voters, including many CDU supporters, feel deceived by Merz’s fiscal about-face.
As if all of that had not been clumsy enough, Merz then further weakened his position by declaring that failure to form this coalition would end his political career. And not just that. He also set another arbitrary deadline, insisting on an agreement before Easter.
One wonders why Merz would have put so much pressure on himself. The SPD clearly would not care about Merz’s political future or his self-imposed timelines. After all, he is their political opponent.
As Germany stumbles through this extraordinary post-election period, Merz has painted himself into a corner with one tactical blunder after another.
Merz has only succeeded in one way: delivering everything he campaigned against.
