The men who would replace Merkel

While all eyes are on Washington, the most important transition of power could be playing out halfway across the world.

On the surface it might not be the world’s most dynamic leadership race. But one of the three middle-aged men in the running to replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel stands to wield more power over the future of a troubled Europe than almost anyone else.

They have each waited a long time to find out who will take up the reins of their party, the Christian Democratic Union. First scheduled for April, after the surprise resignation of Merkel’s heir-apparent Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the election was put off time and again due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now their wait is finally coming to an end. Beginning today, a digital congress of party delegates will begin choosing their new leader. By Saturday, with electronic votes counted and webcam speeches prepared, the likely next Chancellor of Germany will be unveiled to the world. The victor will enter pole position for the Party’s nomination to take on the top job when the current Chancellor retires later this year.

Angela Merkel’s journey from East German physics student to a decade and a half at the helm of European politics is one of the most dramatic in the country’s history. In some ways, however, it was also unsurprising. Her reassuring demeanour, her solidity and her level-headed liberal politics marked her out as one to watch from the moment the Berlin Wall fell.

Starting out as a spokeswoman for the fledgling democratic movement, she ascended through a series of ministerial briefs in the first post-reunification government.

It would be uncharitable to say that none of her potential successors share some of Merkel’s qualities which are a combination of doggedness and tenacity which have earned her the title of ‘Mutti.’

They may still find it within themselves yet. However, their time to shine is running out, and there appears to be only a few substantive differences for delegates to hang on to when making their decisions.

Armin Laschet

All three men in the running are lawyers by training. Armin Laschet sets himself apart, having stepped back from the bar to become a journalist before launching his political career. In the two decades since, he has served as a Member of the Bundestag and as an MEP, before winning the leadership of North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s fourth largest state, centred around the city of Cologne.

Like Merkel, Laschet’s politics are made up of perfectly stable contradictions. A European liberal very much in her mould, he has at the same time sought closer ties with governments that are viewed with suspicion among his colleagues. This includes defending Vladimir Putin over Russia’s Crimea policy and building a deep economic partnership between his region and Beijing.

A devout Catholic who refused to support gay marriage, Laschet selected married gay man Jens Spahn as his running mate nonetheless.

These conflicting priorities are, in many ways, the essence of modern German liberalism. Merkel, for example, has managed to balance her status as the apparent defender of European values with championing controversial economic projects with Russia and China, countries she has repeatedly criticised on political grounds.

However, without Mutti’s sparkle and unimpeachable democratic credentials, this balancing act is much harder. As a result, Laschet has faced unexpectedly tough criticism and seen his popularity among the public halve since first entering the race last year. His solid party connections, though, have allowed him to hang on to the second largest estimated delegate count going into the congress vote.

Norbert Röttgen

The youngest of the candidates at the spry age of 55, Norbert Röttgen is the very picture of an affable Teuton. Charismatic in both German and English, he honed his green credentials when, as Merkel’s Minister for the Environment, he announced that the government would close all of the country’s nuclear power plants. While arguably the worst possible decision for sustainable energy in the long-term, in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, it was far from unpopular.

Röttgen’s chances of a distinguished Cabinet career were, however, torpedoed when he rolled the dice on a bid to lead North Rhine-Westphalia as Minister-President. His defeat to the CDU’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), despite favourable polling throughout, was enough to kill his hopes of a plum regional role stone dead. The drubbing in one of his Party’s key battleground states has been a millstone for him ever since, and ammunition for those who say he lacks the magic touch for retail politics that a Chancellor would need. To make matters worse, his rival Laschet was sent in to clean up, winning the state back for the CDU in 2017.

On foreign policy, Röttgen comes into his own for those with reservations about Laschet’s perceived friendliness towards countries like China and Russia. For those hawks, Röttgen’s defense of European values, human rights and his desire for close relations with President-elect Joe Biden’s administration is a far more comfortable proposition. That and some impressive performances on the campaign trail have seen his estimated delegate count more than double and his stock rise among the public to the point where one poll puts him narrowly in the lead. Despite that, popularity alone is unlikely to be enough, and he trails his two competitors in predicted vote share for this weekend.

Friedrich Merz

It says a lot about the race that, despite first being elected as an MEP five months before the first sledgehammer hit the Berlin Wall, Friedrich Merz is its most anti-establishment figure.

An old school neoliberal conservative of the kind that Merkel spent decades keeping on a short leash, he narrowly lost out to Kramp-Karrenbauer in the 2018 leadership election. He is now, by almost all estimates, the favourite to win this one.

A multimillionaire corporate lawyer and amateur pilot, Merz’ worldview is one of a cosmopolitan, free-trading capitalist Europe, with Germany, the EU and the NATO military bloc at the heart of it. His positions are familiar and identifiable to those conservatives who believed Merkel compromised too often and gave away too much. But, while they are likely to drag back disillusioned right-wingers, his push for tax cuts and opposition to immigration would likely undo much of the current Chancellor’s work to realign the CDU as a centrist force in German politics.

That trade-off may not be as daunting as it sounds, and a radical departure from the status quo is apparently appealing to many. Consistently polling as the preferred candidate for around 30% of the public, The European newspaper estimates that Merz holds 395 of the delegates who will cast their ballots this weekend, compared to Laschet’s 310 and Röttgen’s 125. That said, with 170 ballots still too close to call, however, the race could yet turn against him.

Who would want the job anyway?

Whichever candidate emerges as the eventual winner on Saturday, they will inherit a party, a country and a Europe that is battling against tough currents.

While the CDU has seen its popularity spike in recent months, with the public giving Merkel a glowing review of her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the party’s political fate has otherwise looked uncertain. At the beginning of 2020, there was a fairly realistic prospect that it would be overtaken in the polls by the Green Party, with younger Germans flocking from the centre-left party of power to a more idealistic offering.

Despite that, due to electoral maths, their chances of being in government are limited. Röttgen, with his tree-hugging badges on display for all to see, could make gains here by taking the green agenda and folding it into an offering with a more realistic prospect of being implemented. Merz, on the other hand, would seal the departure of that demographic for good.

Although the CDU-led government, propped up by its Bavarian sister party the CSU and the SPD, has had a hold on the levers of power since Merkel led them back into government in 2005, it is by no means untouchable.

There is a risk that, when Merkel no longer serves as its recognisable face, the big tent party loses its guy-ropes. The tough decisions she has made as Chancellor on raising immigration levels, on ties with China, and on unpopular healthcare and employment reforms, were only politically tenable because she could ask the public to trust her, and they would.

Additionally, while the race to lead the CDU has generally determined the party’s candidate to become Chancellor, the three men vying for the job face yet another complication. If voters conclude that the eventual winning candidate isn’t inspiring enough, he will face stiff competition from the CSU over who will lead the centre-right into the next election. Waiting in the wings is Bavarian premier Markus Söder, the head of the CDU’s sister party, and a new poll from Hamburg’s daily newspaper Der Spiegel finds that 40% of Germans see him as the bloc’s strongest performer. Within the CDU as well, Health Minister Jens Spahn could also become a contender, propped up by a strong performance through the pandemic.

But the level of support for another of the CDU’s competitors spells out a more worrying prospect for whichever man would seek to unite the country after Merkel is gone. The Alternative for Germany party is, without a doubt, one of the most right-wing and nationalistic in mainstream circulation across Western Europe. Fuelled by discontent over migration, and by perceived threats to traditional German life, it has built its base to the point where it is now the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.

For Laschet and Röttgen, if elected, it is clear that they would struggle to win disillusioned conservatives back from the populists by offering more of the same. Merz, however, would come into his own here, and his overtures to right-wing worries about German Christian, capitalist civilisation are either promising or concerning depending on who you speak to.

If the fragile political situation and divisions in Germany society make the job of Chancellor a daunting one, the gulf that Merkel will leave at the summit of European politics offers up even larger shoes that need filling. For much of its modern history, Merkel has been an eternal figure in Brussels, rarely eclipsed in terms of influence by her counterparts and using the EU as an effective vehicle to further German priorities.

But Berlin’s top job doesn’t automatically come with the keys to the European Commission, and the Chancellors departure will fire a starting pistol in capitals like Paris, Amsterdam and Vienna as a separate, unofficial leadership race begins over the future of the political bloc.

Germany’s role in the EU has been unique and, despite its colossal net contributions and its constant brushes with neighbouring troublemakers Poland and Hungary, it has probably got out more than it put in. Favourable trade policy has strengthened its economy, while European workers and students have filled the country’s labour markets and universities.

Unfortunately for the country’s next leader, ties are more frazzled than ever before, with Brexit having strained relations, national eurosceptic movements gaining traction and a post-pandemic slowdown leading to resentment between those in need of a bail out and those with the bucket.

Though Laschet, Röttgen and Merz might be lining up to replace Merkel, it is clear that none of them truly will, either by choice or by circumstances. Her time in office and the stability it brought to Germany and to Europe won’t be easily replicated. Whoever emerges victorious on Saturday, may find that their predecessor has left them more problems to contend with than they might have expected.