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Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz (born 11November 1955) is a German politician serving as Chancellor of Germany since 6 May 2025. He has also served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since January 2022, leading the CDU/CSU (Union) parliamentary group as Leader of the Opposition in the Bundestag from February 2022 to May 2025.
Merz was born in Brilon in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in West Germany. He joined the Young Union in 1972. After finishing law school in 1985, Merz worked as a judge and corporate lawyer before entering full-time politics in 1989 when he was elected to the European Parliament. As a young politician in the 1970s and 1980s, Merz was a staunch supporter of anti-communism, the dominant political doctrine of West Germany and a core tenet of the CDU. He is seen as a representative of the traditional establishment conservative and pro-business wings of the CDU. His book Mehr Kapitalismus wagen ( Venturing More Capitalism) advocates economic liberalism. After serving one term he was elected to the Bundestag, where he established himself as the leading financial policy expert in the CDU. He was elected chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in 2000, the same year as Angela Merkel was elected chairwoman of the CDU, and at the time they were chief rivals for the leadership of the party, which led the opposition together with CSU.
After the 2002 federal election, Merkel claimed the parliamentary group chairmanship for herself, while Merz was elected deputy parliamentary group leader. In December 2004, he resigned from this office, thereby giving up the years-long power struggle with Merkel and gradually withdrew from politics, focusing on his legal career and leaving parliament entirely in 2009, until his return to parliament in 2021. In 2004, he became a senior counsel at Mayer Brown, where he focused on mergers and acquisitions, banking and finance, and compliance. He has served on the boards of numerous companies, including BlackRock. A corporate lawyer and reputed multimillionaire, Merz is also a licensed private pilot and owns two aeroplanes. In 2018, he announced his return to politics. He was elected CDU leader in December 2021, assuming the office in January 2022. He had failed to win the position in two previous leadership elections in 2018, and January 2021. In September 2024, he became the Union's candidate for Chancellor of Germany ahead of the 2025 German federal election. The CDU/CSU subsequently reached an agreement to form a coalition with the SPD. Merz was elected chancellor on 6 May 2025, taking two rounds to clear, surprising many.
As chancellor, he has taken steps to ensure fiscal responsibility and border security. An early issue that arose at the start of his chancellorship has been the designation of the AfD as extremist. In foreign policy, he is a staunch supporter of the European Union, NATO, and the liberal international order, having described himself as "truly European, a convinced Transatlanticist, and a German open to the world". Merz advocates a closer union and "European army".. Prior to the second presidency of Donald Trump, he was frequently described as being "exceptionally pro-American", and was once the chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke association which promotes German-American friendship and Atlanticism.
From 1966 to 1971, Merz studied at the Gymnasium Petrinum Brilon, which he left for disciplinary reasons, moving to the Friedrich-Spee Gymnasium in Rüthen where he finished his Abitur in 1975. From July 1975 to September 1976 Merz served his military service as a soldier with a self-propelled artillery unit of the German Army. From 1976 he studied law with a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, first at the University of Bonn, later at the University of Marburg. At Bonn he was a member of , a Catholic student fraternity founded in 1844 that is part of the Cartellverband. After finishing law school in 1985, he became a judge in Saarbrücken. In 1986, he left his position as a judge in order to work as an in-house Lawyer at the German Chemical Industry Association in Bonn and Frankfurt from 1986 to 1989.
In October 1998 Merz became vice-chairman and in February 2000 Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group (alongside Michael Glos), succeeding Wolfgang Schäuble. In this capacity, he was the opposition leader in the Bundestag during Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's first term.
Ahead of the 2002 elections, Edmund Stoiber included Merz in his shadow cabinet for the Christian Democrats' campaign to unseat incumbent Schröder as chancellor. During the campaign, Merz served as Stoiber's expert for financial markets and the national budget. After Stoiber's electoral defeat, Angela Merkel assumed the leadership of the parliamentary group; Merz again served as vice-chairman until 2004. From 2002 to 2004, he was also a member of the executive board of the CDU, again under the leadership of Merkel.
In 2004, Merz gave a speech to local constituents criticising the "red" (Social Democratic) mayor of his hometown, Brilon, and called for the "red town hall" to be stormed. He noted that his grandfather, , had been mayor of Brilon. This statement drew criticism, for Sauvigny had been a mayor under Nazi Germany. While it is not known whether he was a formal member of the Nazi Party at the time (though he joined later), Sauvigny remained mayor after the Nazis seized power and repressed their political opponents. During his tenure, he praised the Nazi "national revolution" and renamed streets in his town after Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring.
In 2005 he was described by German media as a new member of the , an originally secret network of influential CDU men formed in 1979 by then members of the Young Union during a trip to the South American Andes region. The Andean pact stood in opposition to Merkel, especially in the five years before she became chancellor in 2005, after she had become chairperson of the CDU. Years before his admission, Merz had already a "fundamental loyalty" to his peers in the Andean Pact. Between 2005 and 2009, Merz was a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs. In 2006, he was one of nine parliamentarians who filed a complaint at the Federal Constitutional Court against the disclosure of additional sources of income; the complaint was ultimately unsuccessful. By 2007, he announced he would not be running for political office in the 2009 elections.
Between 2010 and 2011, Merz was commissioned by the state's Financial Market Stabilization Fund (SoFFin) to lead the sale of WestLB, a bank majority-controlled by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, to a private investor. He was criticized in the media for his multi-million-euro salary, as he received a fee of €5,000 per day for unsuccessful work, including Saturdays and Sundays, totaling €1,980,000 from taxpayers.
His work as a lawyer and board member has made him a multimillionaire. He has also taken on numerous positions on corporate boards, including as successor to deceased politicians:
In 2012, he joined Norbert Röttgen's campaign team for the North Rhine-Westphalia state election as advisor on economic policy. He served as a CDU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2012 and in 2017.
In November 2017, Merz was appointed by Minister-President Armin Laschet of North Rhine-Westphalia as his Commissioner for Brexit and Transatlantic Relations, an unpaid advisory position.
On 25 February 2020, he announced his candidacy in the first 2021 CDU leadership election. His closest competitors were Armin Laschet and Norbert Röttgen. After several postponements, the election of the new CDU party president took place at the party congress on 15–16 January 2021, which was the first time in the party's history that it was held fully online. In the first round, Merz received 385 votes, 5 more than Laschet. In the second round, Merz failed to win the party president's post for the second time, receiving 466 votes out of 1001 delegates, while Laschet received 521 votes.
The same day, after losing the leadership election, Merz proposed to "join the current government and take over the Ministry for Economy". The ministry was already headed by his party colleague Peter Altmaier at the time and the proposal was rebuffed. Laschet was quick to placate Merz by recruiting him to his campaign team. Laschet justified this by saying that Merz was "without doubt a team player" and that his economic and financial expertise could provide crucial help in overcoming the huge challenge of the pandemic in a sustainable way.
Ahead of the 2021 German federal election, Patrick Sensburg, Merz's successor in his seat in the Bundestag, failed to secure his party's support for a new candidacy. Merz instead replaced him, returning to the Bundestag after a 12-year absence.
During their short campaign, Merz's rivals positioned themselves as Angela Merkel heirs. Against them, Merz promised a decisive break with the centrist line Merkel had followed for 16 years.
In total, some 400,000 CDU members were able to vote online or by letter. By 17 December 2021, Merz had already won an absolute majority of 62.1 per cent of the membership in the first round of voting, so a second round of voting was not necessary. This meant that at his third attempt, he managed to win the party presidency. Asked for his reaction to the results of the vote, Merz said: "Quietly I just said to myself, 'WOW'; but only quietly, the winning marching songs are far from me".
Merz was formally elected Chairman of the CDU by its 1001 congress delegates at the virtual federal party congress on 22 January 2022. In the end, 915 out of 983 delegates voted for him, winning 94.6% of the valid votes to become the leader of the largest opposition party in the Bundestag. The vote was formally a so-called "digital pre-vote", the result of which was confirmed in writing by the delegates.
After Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Armin Laschet, Merz became the third leader of the Christian Democratic Union within three years. He officially took office as party leader on 31 January 2022.
Exit polls released following the 2025 federal election showed CDU would win the most seats in the German parliament, albeit with its second worst result ever, thus ensuring Merz the role of Chancellor of Germany.
In the aftermath of the election, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) initiated coalition talks to form the next government. In the federal election the CDU, led by Merz, emerged as the strongest party but fell short of an absolute majority, necessitating coalition negotiations. The SPD, under the leadership of Lars Klingbeil, entered discussions to explore potential collaboration. The expected CDU/CSU–SPD coalition would form what is historically referred to in German politics as a Große Koalition (Grand Coalition, although that term describes the coalition of the two biggest parties, which the SPD is not since the 2025 election).
On 5 March 2025, Merz proposed a significant increase in defence spending. He stated at the press conference: "Germany and Europe must quickly strengthen their defence capabilities. The CDU, CSU and SPD will table a motion to amend the Basic Law so that Bundeswehr above 1% of GDP is exempt from the debt brake". This would allow Germany to increase its debt without limits in order to finance its military and provide military assistance to Ukraine. Economists have warned that Merz's plan could trigger inflation and increase Germany's government debt. Germany would pay approximately €71 billion in interest annually from 2035. During negotiations for the next German cabinet, Merz and outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached an agreement to reform the debt brake by amending Paragraphs 109, 115 and 143h of the Basic Law to exempt defence spending exceeding 1% of GDP. Next to the defence spending Merz agreed to create a special fund of €500 billion for "investments in infrastructure and for additional investments to achieve climate neutrality by 2045". On 18 March 2025, German lawmakers approved the amendment to the Basic Law. The change will allow the Merz government to spend €500 billion on infrastructure and green energy within 10 years and to have defence spending above 1% of GDP to be exempted from the debt brake; this allows an unlimited debt-based financing of defence spending. Merz, who had promised to not touch the debt brake rule prior to the German federal election, justified the increase in defence spending by the threat from Russia, citing Putin's "war of aggression against Europe". He called the decision "the first major step towards a new European defence community." He also planned to increase military aid to Ukraine. The trillion-euro spending package was approved before the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 25 March 2025, where The Left and AfD would have the ability to block it. A two-thirds majority was needed to change the constitution. The plan was supported by the CDU, CSU, SPD, and the Greens. Merz's fiscal package was welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
On 9 April 2025, Merz, together with the CSU party leader Markus Söder and the SPD co-leaders Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken, presented the coalition agreement for the planned black-red coalition. This agreement was signed on 5 May 2025, after internal party votes on a government coalition were approved in the three parties in the weeks before.
One of his first official acts was the restructuring of the ministries and the creation of a Ministry for Digital and State Modernization. On 7 May, he made his first foreign visit as Chancellor, meeting in France with President Emmanuel Macron and jointly announcing the creation of a Franco-German Defence and Security Council and afterwards meeting with Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, in Warsaw, emphasizing relations within the Weimar Triangle.
| Paris | 7 May | Met with President Emmanuel Macron | |
| Warsaw | 7 May | Met with Prime minister Donald Tusk | |
| Brussels | 9 May | Met with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen | |
| Kyiv | 10 May | Merz travelled to Kyiv with French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy and display European unity in support of Ukraine. | |
| Tirana | 16 May | Merz attended the 6th European Political Community Summit | |
| Rome | 17 May | Merz met with Prime minister Giorgia Meloni | |
| Vatican City | 18 May | Merz attended inauguration mass and met with Pope Leo XIV | |
| Washington DC | 5 June | Merz met with President Donald Trump | |
| Kananaskis | 15–17 June | Merz attended the 51st G7 summit |
As a young politician in the 1970s and 1980s, he was a staunch supporter of anti-communism, the dominant state doctrine of West Germany and a core tenet of the CDU. His book Mehr Kapitalismus wagen (Translation: Venturing More Capitalism) advocates economic liberalism.
Merz's CDU seeks to speed up visa processing for foreign skilled workers.
In October 2023, following the October 7 attacks, Merz said Germany could not accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza Strip, stating, "We have enough antisemitic young men in the country". In December 2024, Merz called for deportations of illegal Syrian immigrants to Syria and a freeze on new admissions of refugees. As chancellor, he aims to "regularly deport" people to Afghanistan and Syria.
Referring to the fact that around 80 percent of the 200,000 applicants for naturalization in 2024 wanted to keep their first citizenship, Merz intends to abolish the fast naturalization (which made it possible for applicants to obtain German citizenship after living in Germany for three to five years) that the traffic light coalition implemented in 2024. Weeks before the 2025 election, he also advocated for a denaturalization (which would require an amendment to the basic law) in cases in which those with multiple citizenship commit crimes after obtaining German citizenship.
After the January 2025 Aschaffenburg stabbing attack, perpetrated by an Afghans migrant who had no in Germany (and after a Merz called the EU asylum rulesthe Dublin, Schengen, and Eurodac agreements"visibly dysfunctional", stating "Germany must, therefore, make use of its right to the primacy of national law". He announced that under his leadership "there will be fundamental changes to the right of entry, asylum and residence in the Federal Republic of Germany". Merz said that if he were elected chancellor, on the first day of his term in office, he would instruct the Federal Ministry of the Interior to "permanently control the German state borders", and, "to reject all attempts at illegal entry without exception". There would be "a de facto ban on entry into the Federal Republic of Germany for anyone who does not have valid entry documents". He announced a tightening of detention for departure and deportation, and he wants more powers for the federal police. Regarding that, the federal police would be given the right to apply for arrest warrants. Those required to leave the country would no longer be allowed to move freely within the country, and the number of places for deportation detention would increase rapidly.
Merz has been accused of veering between inclusive rhetoric and dog whistling. On a TV talk show, he said that female teachers in German schools were experiencing a lack of respect from "little ", apparently referring to sons of Muslims parents, and allegedly made "xenophobic" remarks calling rejected asylum seekers "social tourists" who come to Germany to "get their teeth done". Weeks before, Merz had referred to some Ukrainian refugees as "welfare tourists" and said that many had come to Germany seeking safety, only to then travel back and forth between both countries after securing social benefits, remarks that he later said he regretted. Merz had also complained about "problems with foreigners" and insisted on a German Leitkultur (), a term that many argue calls for compulsory assimilation. In the 1990s, Merz was in the minority even in his conservative CDU when he voted against liberalizing Germany's abortion laws, against preimplantation genetic diagnosis and criminalizing marital rape.
Merz is known for hawkish stances on authoritarian countries, in particular Russia and China. In 2023, Merz called for Germany to involve key allies, especially France, in negotiations with China as part of a rethinking of ties with the country that reflected a global "paradigm shift" in security and foreign policy. He called China "an increasing threat to German security", and criticized Scholz's decision to allow China's COSCO Shipping to take a stake in the port of Hamburg.
In February 2025, Merz said that Germany would negotiate with France and the United Kingdom about extending their nuclear umbrella to Germany. Merz said, "We need to have discussions with both the British and the French—the two European nuclear powers—about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security from the U.K. and France, could also apply to us". The move to reconvene the old Bundestag were criticized. Merz received international support for the financial package from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Merz has criticized Donald Trump more harshly than Angela Merkel did and has especially criticized Trump's trade war against Europe. In fall of 2024, he said with regards to relations to the US and Russia, he would try to make himself "a little more independent from the US", as the US would be "in election mode" and "not the regulatory power that we were actually used to". When polls during the 2024 German government crisis predicted that Merz would be the most likely to become the next chancellor, he said that Germany "must go from being a sleeping middle power to becoming a leading middle power again". Germany "never really articulated and enforced its interests well enough ... The aim is not to benefit only one side, but to make arrangements that are good for both sides. Trump would call it a deal". In January 2025 he said regarding the United States, "We Europeans must be united ... and those who travel to Washington must not only represent their own interests but the interests of the whole European Union".
In February 2025, Merz said Europe must urgently strengthen its defenses and potentially even find a replacement for NATO, within months. Merz has criticized the Trump-led United States for alleged election interference after American government officials tried to bolster the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, regarded as extremist by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, comparing it to Russian election interference.
A week after the beginning of his chancellorship, Merz said at the summit of the European Political Community that Europe has to "undertake all efforts to keep the Americans on our side" and "can't substitute or replace what the Americans still do for us."
While Merz, as opposition leader, had demanded that the Scholz cabinet deliver German Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, he himself said that he would not necessarily deliver Taurus cruise missiles if he were chancellor. As chancellor, he would provide them if Russia or Vladimir Putin did not comply with Germany's and other European countries' request to stop attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and on the condition that France and Great Britain, for their part, lift the range limitation on the weapons they delivered to Ukraine. Merz said he would, as chancellor, try to bring about a European decision on the question of whether to allow Ukraine to strike against targets deep within Russian territory with Western weapons. He said he would also signal Vladimir Putin his willingness to talk beforehand. In December 2024 he said that Germany is letting Ukraine fight with one arm strapped on its back. Germany should instead give Ukraine the possibility to defend itself effectively with weapons from Germany. In May 2025, Merz supported purchasing long-range missiles for Ukraine, adding that there were "no more range limitations for weapons delivered to Ukraine" from Germany; this change was seen by Politico as allowing Taurus missiles to be delivered to Ukraine in the future. He added that "Ukraine has the right to use the weapons it receives, even beyond its own borders, against military targets on Russian territory".
In 2023, he said, in response to the United States' admonition to Israel to abide by international law, the US had a different relationship to Israel than Germany, and that Germany has an obligation to help the country "without ifs and buts". In October 2024, Merz successfully urged the German government to resume weapons deliveries to Israel, including spare parts for tanks. He proposed stripping dual nationals of their German citizenship for protesting against Israel.
In December 2024, after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, he called on Europe to strengthen its ties with Turkey "to bring political pacification to this region".
He criticized the International Criminal Court's (ICC) decision to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes during the Gaza war. In February 2025, one day after the 2025 German federal election, he announced his will to invite Netanyahu to Germany, "as an open challenge" to the decision of the ICC.
In May 2025, Merz changed his tone, saying he no longer understands Israel's policy in Gaza.
Following the Israeli strikes on Iran on 13 June 2025, Merz stressed that "the goal must remain that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons", and reaffirmed Israel's "right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens." Merz said in an interview to the German public television network ZDF on 17 June 2025, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada, that "This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us." On 23 June 2025, Merz voiced support for US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
In August 2025, Merz announced that Germany won’t authorize any exports of military equipment to Israel that could be used in Gaza “until further notice” in response to the decision by Netanyahu’s Cabinet to take over Gaza City. Merz's decision was criticized by some German politicians.
In 2023, Merz opposed the proposed EU phase-out of fossil fuel vehicles and by 2035, stating that the fight for net-zero emissions "must be achieved with technology and open-mindedness, not bans".
He blamed the crisis at Volkswagen on the Scholz government's focus on Electric vehicle.
Merz supports a business-friendly adaptation of the European Green Deal.
Before the federal election, Merz repeatedly ruled out any possibility of a coalition between CDU and AfD. Merz passionately stated in early January 2025, that under his leadership "there won't be a cooperation between the CDU and the AfD" – stating that the CDU would "sell its soul" in doing so – and that he "ties his destiny as party chairman" to this commitment. The CDU later that month, after a deadly knife attack perpetrated by an Afghans migrant, who had no residence permit, issued a motion regarding migration into the federal parliament, which attained a majority due to the AfD voting alongside the CDU. With this motion, Merz ignored his own proposal, that he uttered in November 2024, to only put questions to the vote that would find a majority without the AfD. Merz claimed that the Union has "not spoken to the AfD, does not discuss things with them", or "compare texts", but that it proposes what it "believes to be right in the matter", insisting that putting a motion to a vote in the Bundestag did not constitute co-operation with the AfD. The Bundestag went on to reject the CDU's proposed legislation a few days later, largely due to a dozen CDU legislators abstaining, a decision seen to be sparked by the AfD-related controversy.
After the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, classified the federal branch of the AfD as a "confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour" just days before Merz' election as Chancellor of Germany, Merz announced that his government will analyse the expert opinion by the BfV on the AfD before deciding on how to proceed.
His many secondary activities raised concerns over whether Merz takes his mandate as a member of the Bundestag seriously and thoroughly. In 2007, Merz wrote a letter to his voters in an attempt to defend himself against criticism of his secondary activities.
In 2021, before the federal election and 12 years after he left the Bundestag in 2009, Merz announced that he would no longer pursue any "professional activities outside of politics" if he were to be re-elected to the Bundestag.
In 2018, Merz rejected the Ludwig Erhard Prize, citing objections to publications by the chairman of the Ludwig Erhard Foundation, Roland Tichy, considered by some to be on the extreme right.
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