German elections

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The conservative CDU/CSU party will be the largest party in the next German parliament with 28.5% of the vote, according to latest projections

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to become the second biggest force in the country, with a record 20.5% of the vote, projections show

Conservative leader Friedrich Merz, who is now in pole position to become Germany's next chancellor, says he wants to form a government by Easter

But Merz and his Christian Democrats have few choices for coalition partners, BBC's Paul Kirby writes, and because of a long-standing political taboo against working with the far-right, AfD isn't one of them

Meanwhile outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says his party's historically low score was a "bitter" defeat, and the Free Democratic Party's results mean it will likely be heading out of parliament

Friedrich Merz - leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - is predicted to become Germany's next Chancellor.

Described by his supporters as an antidote to Europe's crisis of confidence, Merz, 69, is a familiar face to his party's old guard.

Politically, he has never come across as exhilarating. And yet he promises to provide Germany with stronger leadership and tackle many of his country's problems within four years.

His explosive bid last month to tighten migration rules with the support of far-right votes in parliament revealed a man willing to gamble by breaking a major taboo.

It also marked yet another clear break from the CDU's more centrist stance under his former party rival Angela Merkel.

Although Merz ultimately failed to change the law, he had launched a lightning bolt into an election campaign triggered by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government late last year.

Famously sidelined by Merkel before she became chancellor, he quit parliament entirely to pursue a lucrative series of corporate jobs and was written off as yesterday's man.

But he now looks set to clinch the job he has coveted for so long.

Merz was born in the west German town of Brilon in 1955 into a prominent conservative, Catholic family.

His father served as a local judge, as does Friedrich Merz's wife Charlotte to this day.
The younger Merz joined the CDU while still at school.

In an interview 25 years ago with German newspaper Tagesspiegel he laid claim to a wilder youth than his strait-laced CV might suggest.

Among his misadventures, he described racing through the streets on a motorcycle, hanging out with friends by a chip stand and playing the card game Doppelkopfin the back of the class.
A teenage party he referenced ended up with a group of students taking a collective pee in the school aquarium, according to Der Spiegel magazine.

There is some scepticism that the teenage Merz was much of a rabble-rouser. A former classmate recalled that the young Friedrich's disruptive behaviour more often amounted to simply wanting "the last word".

Whether on or off the record, people who have known him have told me he enjoys a beer and can indeed be fun, though few were able to offer an anecdote to illustrate this.

After school, he went on to military service before studying law and marrying fellow student Charlotte Gass in 1981.

The couple have three children.

For a few years, Merz worked as a lawyer but he always had his eye on politics and was elected to the European Parliament in 1989, aged 33.

"We were both quite young and very fresh and let's say unspoilt," says Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, who became an MEP at the same time for the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

She found the young Merz to be serious, reliable, honest and polite.

Even humorous – a quality that she feels is less obvious now: "I assume the amount of bruises over time might have hardened him a bit."

But did he come across early in his career as a potential chancellor?

"I would have probably have said no, no way. Come on, you must be kidding!"

Yet everyone knew him to be deeply ambitious and Merz soon made the switch from EU politics to Germany's national parliament, the Bundestag, in 1994.

He rose through the ranks, touted as a talent on the party's more right-wing, traditionalist faction.

"He's a splendid speaker and a profound thinker," says Klaus-Peter Willsch, a CDU member of the Bundestag who has known him for more than 30 years.

"A fighter," says Willsch, evidenced by the fact that Merz made three attempts to lead his party.
His first two failures, in 2018 and January 2021, could also be read as a sign of his struggle to woo the grassroots.

But it was back in the early noughties, when his ambitions were initially derailed, that he lost out to Angela Merkel in a party power struggle.

Merkel, the understated quantum chemist from the former communist east, and Merz, the overtly assured lawyer from the west, never much saw eye-to-eye.

Merz glosses over this bitter episode in a brief autobiographical post on the CDU website, saying that by 2009 he had decided to leave parliament to "make room for reflection".

His years of reflection involved forging a career in finance and corporate law – becoming a boardroom executive at various international firms and, reputedly, a millionaire.

It would be more than a decade before he returned to parliament, where he has since sought to rip up Merkel's more centrist doctrine on CDU conservatism.

A marked moment of political severance came at the end of January, when Friedrich Merz pushed through a non-binding motion on tougher immigration rules, by relying on votes from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

He insisted there had been no direct collaboration with the AfD, but his move led to mass protests and was twice condemned by none other than Merkel herself.

These were rare public interventions by the woman who ruled Germany for 16 years.

Detractors said it was an unforgivable election gambit, but supporters insisted Merz was, in fact, seeking to lure people cleverly from the far right.

He has risked alienating more moderate parts of the electorate before, voting in the 1990s against a bill that included the criminalisation of marital rape.

He later explained that he considered marital rape to already be a crime, and it was other issues in the bill that he objected to.

Polls suggest he is not especially popular among young people and women - but Klaus-Peter Willsch believes the picture painted of him in German media is unfair.

"I had him several times in my constituency," he tells me. "Afterwards, women come up and say he's a nice guy."

Charlotte Merz has likewise come to his defence, telling the Westfalenpost: "What some people write about my husband's image of women is simply not true."

She says their marriage has been one of mutual support: "We both took care of each other's jobs and divided the childcare in such a way that it was compatible with our professional obligations."
Whatever the critiques, one EU diplomat told me Brussels was "anxiously awaiting his arrival".

"It's time to move on from this German deadlock and get that motor running."