BERLIN – After just six months in power, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition is facing infighting, policy deadlock and sliding poll ratings, undermining its efforts to take on the rising far right.
It marks a difficult start for the conservative politician who ran on bold pledges of reviving the stagnant economy, overhauling the threadbare military and toughening immigration policy after years of drift under the previous government.
In German post-war politics, “there has never been such widespread dissatisfaction with a government in such a short period of time”, Manfred Guellner, director of the Forsa polling institute, told AFP.
For Germans who hoped for more decisive leadership after the last government’s collapse, “their expectations have been dashed”, he said.
The winners of February’s general election, Merz’s centre-right CDU/CSU bloc now find themselves neck-and-neck in the polls with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came second in the poll and is now the largest opposition party.
Merz’s junior coalition partners, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) of ex-chancellor Olaf Scholz, have seen their popularity slide further after a terrible election performance, and now sit around 13-15 percent in polls.
“It is clear that many citizens are dissatisfied or disappointed with the government’s work so far,” Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP from Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told AFP.
The government appeared to be “focusing only on migration instead of the economy, education and security”, he said.
There have been increasing tensions between the ruling parties in Berlin since Merz failed to be elected chancellor in the first round of voting in parliament in early May, a first in post-war Germany.
