Friedrich Merz's first 100 days in office: not a crisis, apparently
chancellor
Friedrich Merz
planned his summer holiday so that he would wake up on his 100th day in office in his holiday home overlooking Bavaria's glittering Tegernsee lake.
Instead, when midnight struck on day 100 last Wednesday, Merz was back in the Berlin chancellery in what his spokesman insisted wasn't a crisis meeting.
No crisis and nothing to see: just a mutinous coalition partner, furious political allies and disastrous poll numbers.
Fewer than one in three Germans are happy with the Merz-lead coalition's debut while his centre-right
Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) is, in one poll, in second place behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 26 per cent support.
READ MORE
Passing the symbolic 100-day mark, some political analysts already see a pattern with Germany's not-so-new chancellor: stumbling into power only on the second vote on May 6th after an unprecedented backbencher revolt.
No one knows for sure who withheld their support in the secret ballot, but many suspect it was conservative CDU members protesting at their leader's breathtaking post-election U-turn.
Rather than consolidate the budget, as the CDU promised voters in February's election campaign, Merz backed plans to borrow at least €100 billion for infrastructure and defence investment.
Seven weeks later, CDU rebels struck again by refusing to back a constitutional court nominee of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Compounding the mess, Merz and his Bundestag officials realised the scale of the looming backbench revolt just hours before the scheduled parliamentary vote, usually a formality after backroom negotiations.
As a Wildean journalist joked at a recent reception: to fumble one key parliamentary vote is bad luck; to fumble two seems careless.
While the court candidate eventually withdrew, lingering SPD mistrust of its coalition partner has compounded coalition rows over everything from broken promises on energy price cuts to pension boosts for stay-at-home mothers.
As a result, a key Merz campaign promise – to end the public squabbling of the previous administration – has come to nothing. Not a good look for Merz who, with no government experience, presented himself to voters as a safe pair of lawyerly hands.
Sensing the grim mood, Merz officials fanned out this week to insist in interviews that the federal government's record is better than its reputation. They point to a new tough line on migration, with tighter border checks and a new return regime for failed asylum seekers.
Friedrich Merz has looked more sure-footed on the international stage than at home in his first 100 days as chancellor. Photograph: Filip Singer/EPA
So far Merz has seemed more sure-footed on the international stage, initiating this week's video conference with Donald Trump ahead of his Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin that secured key assurances for Ukraine.
Merz texts Trump regularly since their Oval office meeting in June, when the president, while touching his German visitor's knee, called him 'a good man to deal with, difficult to deal with'.
Whether Ukraine talks or US trade threats, however, Merz knows his room for influence is limited.
Unlike his dramatic pivot on Israel a week ago, responding to its plans to occupy all of Gaza with a ban on exports of arms that could be used there.
The shift has infuriated senior CDU figures, including key CDU state premiers, but brings Merz in line with German public opinion, where 75 per cent oppose all weapons exports to Israel.
When Merz returns from his interrupted Bavarian holiday, analysts suggest the chancellor needs to shift his attention back to domestic policy.
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'Merz is a proactive foreign policy chief delivering positive and coherent messages, but the economy is still flat and things don't look so good on the domestic front,' said Prof Klaus Schubert, political scientist at the University of Münster.
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Irish Times
5 days ago
- Irish Times
Friedrich Merz's first 100 days in office: not a crisis, apparently
German chancellor Friedrich Merz planned his summer holiday so that he would wake up on his 100th day in office in his holiday home overlooking Bavaria's glittering Tegernsee lake. Instead, when midnight struck on day 100 last Wednesday, Merz was back in the Berlin chancellery in what his spokesman insisted wasn't a crisis meeting. No crisis and nothing to see: just a mutinous coalition partner, furious political allies and disastrous poll numbers. Fewer than one in three Germans are happy with the Merz-lead coalition's debut while his centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is, in one poll, in second place behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 26 per cent support. READ MORE Passing the symbolic 100-day mark, some political analysts already see a pattern with Germany's not-so-new chancellor: stumbling into power only on the second vote on May 6th after an unprecedented backbencher revolt. No one knows for sure who withheld their support in the secret ballot, but many suspect it was conservative CDU members protesting at their leader's breathtaking post-election U-turn. Rather than consolidate the budget, as the CDU promised voters in February's election campaign, Merz backed plans to borrow at least €100 billion for infrastructure and defence investment. Seven weeks later, CDU rebels struck again by refusing to back a constitutional court nominee of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Compounding the mess, Merz and his Bundestag officials realised the scale of the looming backbench revolt just hours before the scheduled parliamentary vote, usually a formality after backroom negotiations. As a Wildean journalist joked at a recent reception: to fumble one key parliamentary vote is bad luck; to fumble two seems careless. While the court candidate eventually withdrew, lingering SPD mistrust of its coalition partner has compounded coalition rows over everything from broken promises on energy price cuts to pension boosts for stay-at-home mothers. As a result, a key Merz campaign promise – to end the public squabbling of the previous administration – has come to nothing. Not a good look for Merz who, with no government experience, presented himself to voters as a safe pair of lawyerly hands. Sensing the grim mood, Merz officials fanned out this week to insist in interviews that the federal government's record is better than its reputation. They point to a new tough line on migration, with tighter border checks and a new return regime for failed asylum seekers. Friedrich Merz has looked more sure-footed on the international stage than at home in his first 100 days as chancellor. Photograph: Filip Singer/EPA So far Merz has seemed more sure-footed on the international stage, initiating this week's video conference with Donald Trump ahead of his Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin that secured key assurances for Ukraine. Merz texts Trump regularly since their Oval office meeting in June, when the president, while touching his German visitor's knee, called him 'a good man to deal with, difficult to deal with'. Whether Ukraine talks or US trade threats, however, Merz knows his room for influence is limited. Unlike his dramatic pivot on Israel a week ago, responding to its plans to occupy all of Gaza with a ban on exports of arms that could be used there. The shift has infuriated senior CDU figures, including key CDU state premiers, but brings Merz in line with German public opinion, where 75 per cent oppose all weapons exports to Israel. When Merz returns from his interrupted Bavarian holiday, analysts suggest the chancellor needs to shift his attention back to domestic policy. [ Germans told to work more, as citizens make most of holidays Opens in new window ] 'Merz is a proactive foreign policy chief delivering positive and coherent messages, but the economy is still flat and things don't look so good on the domestic front,' said Prof Klaus Schubert, political scientist at the University of Münster.
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Irish Times
Germany's Israel pivot is raising fears among Jewish residents
News spreads fast in Berlin – as do the consequences. Last Friday afternoon Walter, a British-Jewish friend, was approached on a Berlin bus by a German man in his early thirties. Had he heard, the man asked Walter, that Germany would no longer sell weapons to Israel ? It was a slight oversimplification: an hour earlier chancellor Friedrich Merz had announced that his government would no longer supply Israel with arms that could be used in Gaza . Walter told his fellow passenger that, yes, he had heard the news. And that's when it all kicked off. READ MORE 'Are you a Zionist?' the man demanded to know. Walter – grey beard, wearing a cap and a yellow ribbon in solidarity with the October 7th hostages – said 'yes, of course', but kept his head down, hoping the man would go away. The man didn't go away, shouting: 'You're a child-murderer!' He then grabbed Walter's cap from his head, jumped off the bus and threw it on the side of the road as he walked off. Days later, in his kitchen, Walter is still processing what happened – and why. 'He was happy, so gleeful to have found someone upon whom he could spill his rage,' said Walter. 'He had obviously seen I was Jewish, but didn't ask that. Instead, he asked if I had heard about Merz, making me wonder if Merz has opened the floodgates.' German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (unseen) after a video call with other heads of state ahead of a summit between the US and Russian leaders, in Berlin, Germany, 13 August 2025. Almost two years on, the Hamas-led October 7th 2023 attacks – which saw 1,200 Israelis killed and more than 250 others taken hostage, followed by an Israeli military campaign estimated to have killed more than 60,000 in Gaza, according to local health authorities - continue to trigger shock waves in Germany, land of the Holocaust. Merz's decision last Friday has caused a fresh shock wave although, or perhaps because, it was largely symbolic. No major weapons exports to Israel were looming. Instead, Merz said the decision was a response to Israel's failure to end the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza and its plans for a full takeover of the enclave. [ Germans told to work more, as citizens make most of holidays Opens in new window ] The latter, the chancellor said, 'contributes to the intensification of social conflicts in Germany and Europe which we must avoid'. Pro-Palestinian campaigners in Germany see the main source of social conflict here in people like chancellor Merz supporting Israel regardless of the Government/ IDF strategy in Gaza, resulting in demonstration bans and violent police crackdowns on German demonstrators. Until a week ago, Merz's ruling centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and the pro-Israeli Springer media group, disagreed energetically with this stance. The problem was not Israel, they argued, but the latent, violent anti-Semitism – often masquerading as anti-Zionism – they saw among the country's main critics: Germany's Palestinian and Arab communities and leftist/ anti-colonialist campaigners. To shore up their position, they took implicit German historical obligations – to defend Israel's security and its continued existence – and added an explicit label: Staatsräson, or reason of state. With Germany's previously unconditional support of Israel now conditional, previous critics of the Staaträson term – and its logic – have now co-opted both. 'If you stand for Israel's security and continued existence, you cannot be for Israel's conquest of Gaza,' said Prof Moshe Zimmermann, an Israeli historian, on German public television. In the week since the Merz pivot, curious things are happening – even to the pro-Israeli Bild. Previously the tabloid printed no pictures from inside Gaza – except those it denounced as Hamas propaganda. This week it juxtaposed an image of the ruins of Gaza with 1945 Dresden – a comparison many readers supported. The shift didn't begin in the last week. Last May, a theatre in the western city of Celle staged a play drawing parallels between residents of postwar displaced people's camps – including Holocaust survivors – and Palestinians in modern-day camps in Lebanon and Jordan. When Celle rabbi Max Feldhake expressed concerns about such comparisons during a public discussion, he says an older German man stood up to say that 'what Israel is doing is worse than the Nazis'. People getting on trams in the midst of the ruins left by an Allied air raid on Johannstrasse, Dresden, in the Soviet zone of Germany after the Second World War. Photograph: Fred Ramage/As exculpatory arguments go it's not new, but Feldhake says it is enjoying a post-October 7th renaissance. 'I get the sense that large parts of the German population are now delighted, saying: 'Finally we get to tell off damn Jews',' said Feldhake, over coffee in Berlin. He is worried about the unintended consequences of the Merz shift that could, for instance, see the October 7th protest slogan: 'Free Palestine from German guilt' merge with the thinking behind another postwar slogan: 'The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz'. [ France, Germany and UK call on Iran to resume nuclear discussions with US Opens in new window ] Back in his kitchen, Walter views his bus attacker – white, German – as part of a new norm, where old and new resentments collide to spark a surge in anti-Jewish violence. 'It's not new, it's just that the non-Jews hadn't noticed it yet,' he said. 'Attacks like this make about as much sense as all the Irish in 80s England being blamed for the IRA attacks there.'
Irish Times
13-08-2025
- Irish Times
France, Germany and UK call on Iran to resume nuclear discussions with US
France , Germany and the UK have told the UN they are prepared to trigger the reimposition of sanctions on Iran unless it resumes negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme. The foreign ministers of the three countries – known collectively as the E3 – wrote to the UN on Tuesday to raise the spectre of implementing a 'snapback' mechanism unless Iran takes action. But they said they had offered to extend a deadline to start the process if Tehran returned to the negotiating table. 'We have made it clear that if Iran is not willing to reach a diplomatic solution before the end of August 2025, or does not seize the opportunity of an extension, [the E3] are prepared to trigger the snapback mechanism,' the ministers said in the letter, which was obtained by the Financial Times. The European powers have to decide whether to invoke snapback a month before crucial clauses of a 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with the E3, the Obama administration, Russia and China, expire in October. READ MORE The accord, under which Iran agreed to strict limits on its nuclear activity in return for sanctions relief, has been in a state of collapse since US president Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned it during his first term. Iran responded by aggressively expanding its nuclear activity and was enriching uranium at levels close to weapons grade before Israel launched its 12-day war against the Islamic republic in June . Before the conflict, the Trump administration and Iran had been holding indirect talks in an effort to resolve the long-running stand-off over its nuclear programme. But Israel's attack, which was launched 48 hours before Tehran and Washington were to hold a sixth round of talks, upended the diplomatic process. The US briefly joined Israel in bombing Iran's main nuclear facilities. The E3 told Iran at talks in Turkey last month that they could extend the snapback deadline if Tehran agreed to resume talks with the US and co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. One western diplomat said the talks had been 'difficult'. On Tuesday, the E3 said their offer of an extension 'remained unanswered by Iran'. The ministers said a 'limited extension' would provide more time for talks aimed at concluding a new nuclear agreement, while maintaining the ability to reimpose sanctions to prevent nuclear proliferation. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin /AFP via Getty Images Following the Istanbul meeting in July, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told the FT that the E3 had no 'legal or moral grounds' to implement the snapback. He warned that Iran would exclude the European powers from future nuclear talks if they went through with the process. Mr Araghchi accused the E3 of failing to meet their commitments under the 2015 deal and said the snapback mechanism was 'not that important any more'. 'With the Europeans, there is no reason right now to negotiate because they cannot lift sanctions, they cannot do anything,' Mr Araghchi said. 'If they do snapback, that means that this is the end of the road for them.' In their letter, the E3 ministers said they were 'clearly and unambiguously' legally justified in reimposing sanctions on Iran because since 2019 – a year after Mr Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord – Tehran had 'wilfully' departed from its commitments under the deal. Tehran has said it remains open to talks with the Trump administration. But its stance hardened after Israel's assault. Mr Araghchi has said Iran wants assurances from the US that it will not be attacked during future talks, and wants 'confidence-building measures', including the US agreeing to compensate Iran for war damage. Iran announced after Israel's attack that it was suspending co-operation with the IAEA, which has had inspectors in the country. A senior IAEA official met with Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday, Iran's foreign ministry said, but the UN nuclear watchdog has not commented on the trip. The letter to UN secretary general António Guterres and the UN Security Council was signed by French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot, German foreign minister Johann Wadephul, and UK foreign minister David Lammy. It comes two months after the US and Israel struck nuclear sites in Iran. The Iranian mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter.- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
