German conservative leader announces chancellor candidacy

Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), announced Tuesday that he will run as the conservative candidate for chancellor in Germany’s next federal election.

“We’re going into the 2025 federal election year together with the firm intention of taking back leadership responsibility for our country,” Merz said in front of reporters.

Based on current polling, which shows the German conservatives leading with 32 percent, far head of any other party, Merz is in pole position to become Germany’s next chancellor in the national vote scheduled to take place a year from now.

Merz has shifted the CDU markedly to the right on migration since he became chairman of the party in 2022, marking a departure from the more liberal migration policies of the former CDU chancellor, Angela Merkel.

From the opposition, Merz has pushed the current left-leaning government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to adopt much harder policies on migration — including by turning back asylum seekers at the border. 

Merz appeared on Tuesday alongside Markus Söder, the premier of Bavaria and leader of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), a sister party to the CDU. Söder, who was thought to be the main competitor to Merz for the position of conservative chancellor candidate, had in the past expressed frustration with the CDU’s more liberal migration policies under Merkel’s leadership.

But Söder endorsed Merz, suggesting the rift between the conservative sister parties over migration had been bridged.

“The fundamental realignment of the CDU on the issue of migration has healed the wound between the CDU and CSU,” said Söder. “Perhaps it was also a wound that has caused upset among many people in Germany. I think we can say that we are completely together again for the first time. We no longer have any disputes and that simply feels good.”

Merz, for his part, portrayed the CDU’s success as critical to upholding centrist politics in Germany, particularly as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party — now polling in second place with 19 percent nationally — builds strength. 

The AfD recently won a state election in Thuringia, and is leading in polls in the state of Brandenburg ahead of an election there on Sunday. At the same time, Germany’s coalition government — made up of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) — is plumbing new depths in polls.

“In parts of our country, the CDU/CSU is the last remaining major popular party of the democratic center,” Merz said. “This is particularly true for eastern Germany, but it also applies to the whole of Germany. We have a great responsibility here in the political center of our country.”