Angela
Merkel Is Retired. But She’s Still on the Ballot.
If anything
unites the parties in Germany’s election campaign, it is running away from the
former chancellor, whose legacy voters have soured on.
Jim
Tankersley
By Jim
Tankersley
Reporting
from Berlin
Feb. 9, 2025
A chorus of
criticism greeted Friedrich Merz, the favorite to become Germany’s chancellor,
last month when he broke a taboo against working with a hard-right party to
pass legislation. But it was a lone voice of dissent that rocked the country’s
political scene: Angela Merkel, the once-beloved former chancellor, who called
Mr. Merz’s decision simply “wrong.”
Ms. Merkel
and Mr. Merz have famously jockeyed to lead Germany’s Christian Democrats for
much of this century. Ms. Merkel won the early rounds, served 16 years as
chancellor, and retired in 2021. Mr. Merz finally has a chance to win her old
job in elections this month.
But Ms.
Merkel is complicating his efforts — both with her open critiques and, more
important, with a policy legacy that German voters have soured on.
The German
election is animated by concerns over a stagnant economy, a decade-long surge
of immigration, high energy prices and tenuous national security, with Russia
waging war to the east and President Trump threatening to upend NATO from the
West. The problems have led to a reconsideration of Ms. Merkel and how she
steered Germany.
It was Ms.
Merkel who kept Germany’s borders open starting in 2015, allowing what became
millions of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere to settle. That move
has spurred a backlash among German voters. Many political leaders blame it for
the rise of the hard-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which has
campaigned relentlessly on deporting certain immigrants and sits second behind
the Christian Democrats in national polls.
It was Ms.
Merkel who agreed to shut down the country’s nuclear power plants and increase
Germany’s reliance on imported natural gas from Russia, helping to create an
electricity price spike and a security crisis years later, after Moscow decided
to turn off the taps following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
And it was
Ms. Merkel who, economists say, underinvested in revitalizing Germany’s
critical infrastructure, contributing to what German business leaders often
call a competitiveness crisis. She also pushed for deepened trade with China
and the rest of the world. That bet on a globalized business model that has
gone bad in a new age of populist protectionism by countries like the United
States and increased competition from low-cost Chinese imports for Germany
manufacturers.
In the
waning weeks of the campaign, Ms. Merkel is taking criticism from all sides of
the contest. Her memoir did not make the splash many analysts expected when it
was released last fall. A poll released last week by the Bild news
organization, conducted by the research agency INSA, found 43 percent of
Germans now say Ms. Merkel’s policies were bad for the country, compared with
31 percent who say they were good.
In many
ways, Ms. Merkel finds herself in a similar historical position to that of
President Bill Clinton in America. She was once the most popular leader of her
generation, on the strength of overseeing an economic boom. Now, like Mr.
Clinton, who has seen public opinion turn strongly against his moves to sign
NAFTA and throw open trade with China, she finds her legacy under attack.
She is
responding with few regrets, and, with the election looming, by criticizing Mr.
Merz.
That
criticism has drawn a backlash, and a renewed focus on Ms. Merkel, even though
she is not running for a parliamentary seat this month.
“Merkel’s
book and her recent public statement are, unfortunately, more about insisting
on being right than about providing working solutions to people’s current
problems,” said Nico Lange, a former chief of staff to one of Ms. Merkel’s
defense ministers. Her actions, he added, were “therefore perceived negatively,
even by most of her former supporters.”
No single
policy action is driving German voters in this election more than Ms. Merkel’s
refugee decision in 2015.
At the time,
Ms. Merkel praised the German public for embracing downtrodden migrants, even
those who did not qualify for official refugee status. But German society has
been strained by a decade-long influx of migrants who arrived with little or no
German language knowledge, and who have often received significant social
assistance.
A series of
seemingly unrelated deadly attacks, carried out by immigrants in Germany cities
over the last year, has vaulted migration to the top of voter concerns along
with the economy.
Analysts
roundly agree that attention has helped the AfD, parts of which have been
classified as extremist by German intelligence.
Mr. Merz was
attempting to address voters’ migration concerns when he pushed a package of
tough-on-migration measures in Parliament late last month, breaking a postwar
consensus against working to pass laws with parties deemed extreme.
Ms. Merkel’s
decision to allow refugees to flow freely into the country “was just a big
shock to Germany that we’re still grappling with, that explains some of the
politics today,” said Cornelia Woll, a political scientist who is the president
of the Hertie School, a private university in Berlin. “I think it’s fair to
say, did we bite off more than we could chew?”
Economic
research has generally found immigrants boosted the size of Germany’s economy
over the past decade, by working and by spending money. By some measures, the
nation has been more successful than many of its peers in helping immigrants
integrate and learn the local language.
A report
last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found
that the employment rate for immigrants in Germany hit 70 percent in 2022, a
record and much higher than most other European Union countries.
Still, polls
have shown rising voter unease with migration and crimes committed by
immigrants. Politicians, including a wide range of chancellor candidates in
this election, have increasingly responded by denouncing Ms. Merkel’s policies
of welcome.
Alice
Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the AfD, repeatedly raised and disparaged
Ms. Merkel last month in an interview with the billionaire Elon Musk on his
social media platform X.
Christian
Lindner, the chancellor candidate for the pro-business Free Democrats, said in
an interview that some German parties “have still not recognized what the
overriding interest of the people in this country is — namely, a break with
Merkel’s policies.”
Even Mr.
Merz has piled on. “We find ourselves left with the tatters of 10 years of
misguided asylum and migration policy in this country,” he said last month,
impugning both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ms. Merkel.
Mr. Merz and
his Christian Democrats joined the AfD to pass a mostly symbolic migration
measure late last month; a second vote, aiming to toughen the migration law,
ultimately failed amid some defections by party members.
Mr. Merkel’s
criticism of Mr. Merz came just before the final vote and further strained her
relationship with the party they share. Ms. Merkel declined to take an honorary
party position after her retirement, as is often customary, and rarely appears
at party events.
It also
contributed to an image of stubbornness that has defined Ms. Merkel’s time out
of office.
“She really
does not recognize her mistakes,” said Stefan Meister, the head of the Center
for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia at the
German Council on Foreign Relations. “I think this is, for me, really crucial.”
In her
autobiography, “Freedom,” Ms. Merkel seemingly blamed her successors in
Germany’s mainstream political parties for aiding the rise of the AfD, by
tacking to the right on its signature issue.
“The
democratic parties have considerable influence over how strong AfD can become
in practice,” Ms. Merkel wrote. “I am convinced that, if they assume they can
keep it down by appropriating its pet topics and even trying to outdo it in
rhetoric without offering any real solutions to existing problems, they will
fail.”
And while
she conceded few major errors on policy issues, Ms. Merkel’s book contained
some broad admissions of fallibility.
“I know that
I am not perfect and make mistakes,” she wrote, about halfway through its
nearly 700 pages.
Near the
end, she added, “A chancellor should never have to apologize too often, but
neither should they shy away from doing so when unavoidable, for fear that it
could be interpreted as weakness.”
Melissa Eddy
contributed reporting.
Jim
Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of
Germany, Austria and Switzerland. More about Jim Tankersley
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