BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stood by his vow to stay in office Monday after his party suffered two more regional election defeats and was voted out of a state legislature in a humiliating first. But he faces a struggle to keep his reform agenda intact.
Minutes after polls closed on Sunday, the unpopular Merz said he planned to stay on as leader of both Germany and his center-right party, and said that he would push through reforms to Europe's biggest economy.
Hours later, final results underlined the extent of what Merz conceded was a “disaster” in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an eastern region on the Baltic Sea coast. His center-right Christian Democratic Union fell just below the 5% of the vote needed to keep seats in the regional parliament, the first time that has happened in 77 years of modern Germany’s federal republic, after losing more than half its support. The far-right Alternative for Germany finished as the strongest party.
In Sunday's other election, the CDU dropped to second place in Berlin behind the hard-left Left Party, which is in pole position to lead the next city government — though Merz’s party could, depending on how coalition talks go, still retain city hall.
But after days of speculation about Merz's future, there were no prominent public calls Monday for his departure and no sign of a challenge. The chancellor said no one raised any “personnel questions” in party leadership meetings Sunday or Monday.
“It is the historic task of the (governing) coalition here in Berlin and the political center as a whole to make our country fit for the coming years,” Merz said. “Extremists suggest that there are easy solutions. But everyone who has ever governed knows there are no easy solutions.”
At the same time, he acknowledged that the CDU needs to work on its profile. He said that it “no longer has satisfactory answers to too many questions, and we will and must change that.”
A far-right party gains again
Neither of the states that voted Sunday is a political heavyweight. The CDU's 2023 win in Berlin was its only one in the past 25 years in the capital, which has tended to lean left. The party was already weak in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
But the results added to the headwinds Merz faces after a stinging defeat by the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, two weeks ago in Saxony-Anhalt, another region in the formerly communist east, damaged his authority and set off speculation that he might be replaced.
While AfD was the strongest party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the center-left Social Democrats — the junior party in Merz's national governing coalition — were fairly close behind after a campaign focused squarely on the state governor, Manuela Schwesig, as a bulwark against the far right. That polarization helped squeeze other mainstream parties, including the CDU.
A left-leaning three-party coalition under Schwesig would have a majority in the new regional legislature.
Questions over how Germany should be reformed
Schwesig and others in the governing parties have cast doubt on aspects of the federal government's reform agenda, which is meant to bolster a chronically sluggish economy. The reform plans include a potentially painful overhaul of the creaking pension system and of the healthcare system. A proposal to scrap a rule allowing people who have paid pension contributions for 45 years to retire early without taking a financial hit has drawn particular criticism.
The Social Democrats' national leaders said Monday that they stand by the coalition. But they made clear that they will seek at least some changes to the plans.
Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil, who is also the finance minister, said that “saying we will ignore what voters told us in three state elections won't work.”
“We need reforms, but these reforms must be fair and they need support in the population,” he said. The party's other co-leader, Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, said the plans need a “reality check” and a “fairness check,” but that she was optimistic of finding solutions on the pension system reform, the most controversial plan.
“There would be nothing more lethal than letting this coalition break apart over some technical question,” Bas said.
Merz said he wouldn't speculate about “where we must make corrections.”
There are at least no more electoral tests this year. However, five state elections are scheduled next year, three of them in April.
They include one in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, currently led by a prominent CDU figure often cited as a possible successor to Merz, Hendrik Wüst. None of the five elections is in the east, where AfD is strongest.
Looking forward, much will depend on the CDU's influential regional leaders. But there was no sign of a challenge to Merz Monday from them or others.
“You get the feeling that the stronger figures are trying to stay away from Berlin at the moment,” Thomas Poguntke, a longtime political science professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Duesseldorf, told Phoenix television.
“Swapping out a leadership figure wouldn't achieve so terribly much now,” he added, but the chancellor has made avoidable mistakes in the past, “and the government's handicraft simply must improve.”