Henry Donovan is an Anglo-German journalist and communications adviser based in Berlin
Friedrich Merz arrived in Washington this week alongside Europe’s most senior leaders, ostensibly to coordinate the continent’s response to Trump’s Ukraine designs. Here was Germany’s moment to demonstrate the leadership it perpetually claims to seek – a chance to shape the conversation that will determine Europe’s security architecture for years to come. Instead, before the
We are 100 days into Friedrich Merz’s chancellorship, and Germany has achieved something truly remarkable: a coalition government so perfectly dysfunctional that it appears to have been designed by the AfD’s campaign strategists. The signs of trouble emerged from the very beginning. Merz, who could barely contain his eagerness to finally assume the chancellorship, stumbled
Friedrich Merz may have restored Germany’s diplomatic credibility internationally, but his latest foray into Middle Eastern statecraft shows the Chancellor has fundamentally misunderstood both the nature of the Palestinian project and Germany’s own moral obligations. Like Keir Starmer, by threatening to recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel fails to meet certain conditions, Merz has managed the
Friedrich Merz has managed something truly remarkable: he’s simultaneously the most internationally successful German chancellor in decades and quite possibly the most domestically incompetent. While foreign leaders sing his praises and credit him with everything from Ukraine’s weapons supply to Nato’s renewed backbone, German conservatives are discovering they’ve elected a man who can charm Trump
Two days. That’s how long Friedrich Merz’s signature border policy survived before walking into a perfectly laid ambush. While international economists celebrate Germany’s potential economic resurgence under new leadership, the country’s Chancellor is discovering that electoral victories mean little when faced with opponents who don’t need votes to wield power. The weapon of choice? Legal
Today, the CDU’s Friedrich Merz has signed a coalition agreement with the Social Democrats. In doing so he has formalised the most spectacular betrayal of centre-right voters in modern German history. The document might as well be written in red ink, given how thoroughly the SPD has dominated the negotiations despite suffering their most catastrophic electoral defeat
Despite suffering their worst electoral humiliation since the 1890s, Germany’s Social Democrat party (SPD) is displaying a remarkable combination of arrogance and delusion. Having collapsed to a mere 16 per cent in last month’s election, the party has nonetheless strong-armed Friedrich Merz’s victorious CDU into abandoning fiscal discipline and embracing ruinous debt policies. This audacious
German politics has delivered yet another masterclass in how to betray your voters while maintaining a straight face. This time it is Friedrich Merz, the supposedly steel-spined conservative who spent years critiquing Angela Merkel’s drift leftward, who has now managed to outdo even his predecessor’s talent for abandonment of what he promised. Merz’s capitulation on
The real winners of Germany’s election are sitting in Moscow. Despite Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) technically claiming victory with a meagre 28 per cent showing, the truly remarkable surge belongs to the openly pro-Russian forces that now dominate the political landscape. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left party Die Linke (successor
