Katja Hoyer: Is Friedrich Merz a Merkel 2.0? Initial statements give cause for concern

Friedrich Merz has named his ministers. The selection is a pleasant surprise. But there's no sign of a new beginning. The analysis.

Writer and author, Katja Hoyer. Hoyer Archive

Friedrich Merz wanted to form a government by Easter. That didn't quite work out, but now the coalition is in place. The CDU, CSU, and SPD have agreed to a joint coalition agreement, which is scheduled to be signed on Monday. Meanwhile, the new cabinet is taking shape. It's encouraging that some new members will be joining, who are different from both the "traffic light" coalition and the grand coalitions of past years. In substance, this makes a policy shift possible, but in terms of style, Merz is somewhat reminiscent of Merkel.

The list of CDU/CSU ministers contains several surprises, not least due to the lack of prominent party figures. For example, former chancellor candidate and North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Armin Laschet, who had been considered for the post of Foreign Minister, which is expected to go to the CDU/CSU for the first time in almost 60 years, was left out. Johann Wadephul from Schleswig-Holstein, considered a Merz man, is now slated for the position.

The Eastern quota in the CDU

The fact that the Chancellor and Foreign Minister will be working together in the future can in itself be seen as a policy shift, if only because Merz brings with him a greater interest in acting on the global stage – unlike his predecessor Olaf Scholz, who was seen abroad as the epitome of German indecisiveness, which repeatedly gave his Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock room to do her own thing. Germany is likely to speak with one voice in Europe and the world in the future.

Further surprises came with the nomination of ministers who are familiar with their future policy areas. Karsten Wildberger, head of the MediaMarkt-Saturn chain, will be responsible for digitalization and government modernization. Alois Rainer, the Federal Minister of Agriculture, will not be an educator but a trained butcher from the Bavarian Forest. Katherina Reiche, head of the E.ON subsidiary Westenergie, will take over economic affairs and energy.

The latter is a native of Brandenburg and the only candidate from the eastern states for a ministerial post. Nevertheless, Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) expressed satisfaction with the move, as in addition to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, positions in the second tier are also to be filled with East Germans, for example, with Saxon Christiane Schenderlein as Minister of State for Sport and Volunteering. The East-West balance is "a story that Friedrich Merz has achieved really well," Kretschmer believes . But perhaps he has to see it that way, too. After all, he is not only Prime Minister, but also CDU Vice-President.

The East Germans and the new government

According to polls , it is important to most East Germans that East Germans serve in the cabinet. I understand that, but I doubt that perspectives from the East can really be covered by a quota. The media may celebrate Reiche as the "first East German economics minister," but I probably don't need to remind anyone that we also had an East German chancellor for 16 years in Angela Merkel and an East German federal president in Joachim Gauck. According to polls, Merkel quickly became less popular in the East than in the West. Gauck publicly alienated East Germans, in whom he sensed a tendency towards "leaders." Other Eastern politicians, such as Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens) and Merkel's representative for the East, Marco Wanderwitz (CDU), have also expressed concerns about East Germans' capacity for democracy. Voices from the East are not necessarily votes for the East.

The same applies to other quotas. One can complain that the CDU only proposed three women but four men; that Berlin, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia missed out; or that, with Serap Güler as State Secretary in the Foreign Office, only one person with a migration background is entering the government. "A potato cabinet?" asks the Frankfurter Rundschau. In North Rhine-Westphalia, people complain that Merz "has no idea about politics, party, and proportional representation – or that he doesn't even care about any of it."

I believe that many voters don't care who addresses their problems competently. At least I don't care whether a man or a woman manages to make rail travel a reality again. Or whether the person who dares to address the issue of migration comes from Hamburg or the Black Forest.

The unimaginative little CDU party conference in Berlin

I think others see it that way too. When I was traveling in Strausberg, Brandenburg, before the election, I spoke with a fruit vendor from Vietnam who came to Germany as a guest worker during the GDR era. He's voting for the CDU because, as a small business owner, he hopes it will reduce bureaucracy and taxes so his shop can survive until retirement. For him, it's less important how "white and male" the cabinet is and more important whether it can create a situation in which his business will thrive again.

Of course, diversity in government is important, but so is diversity of perspectives, opinions, and expertise. Personally, I don't have a problem with the fact that proportional representation wasn't at the top of Merz's personnel wish list. The soon-to-be chancellor has proposed ministers who at least bring some expertise and semble more of a policy change than the vague coalition agreement suggests. But the new faces will still have to prove themselves. Therefore, I'll refrain from criticism for now—especially criticism that relates solely to the origin or gender of the future cabinet members.

What makes me somewhat pessimistic, however, is the lukewarm tone that has emerged so far from Merz's self-described "working coalition." What Germany urgently needs is an economic recovery, fresh ideas, and far-reaching reforms. But there wasn't much talk of that at the CDU's small party conference in Berlin. Merz justified the subdued mood in his party (and implicitly also the poor poll ratings of the CDU/CSU, which is currently neck and neck with the AfD in many surveys) by arguing that his new government isn't focused on creating a spirit of optimism, but rather on addressing problems.

Pragmatic doers

Complemented by the phrase "We can do it," that sounded a lot like Merkel. And not just in wording. Merkel called her claim to limit herself to problem-solving "driving by sight" and thus gained a reputation as a crisis chancellor. But "driving by sight" also means not thinking about what might be around the next bend or where one even wants to go. This lack of strategy led Merkel to make spontaneous crisis decisions, like the one to open the borders in 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people were already there.

Merz has deliberately assembled a cabinet of loyal and pragmatic doers. This has many advantages over the ideological politics of individual ministers during the traffic light coalition, but it requires someone to set a course that the team of Merz loyalists can then implement. Whether Merz has what it takes and can thus govern better than Merkel and Scholz remains to be seen. Many voters appear skeptical at first. In the latest YouGov poll, the CDU/CSU and SPD combined received only 40 percent in the Sunday poll. Merz's cabinet will have its hands full trying to change the mood in the country. Hopefully, the new ministers will be more driven internally than their leader appears to be externally.

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