Merz's crisis threatens Germany's stability as AfD surges

Friedrich Merz has become a record-breaker in German politics, though not in any way he would have chosen. At thirteen percent approval, he holds the lowest popularity rating of any chancellor since modern polling began. German voters took to him slowly and abandoned him faster than they have any predecessor. The former corporate lawyer is widely seen as distant and dismissive of ordinary people's concerns. He has been in office for sixteen months.

In that time, his Christian Democratic Union party has collapsed in three consecutive regional elections. Most strikingly, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on Sunday, the CDU failed to clear the five percent threshold needed to enter the state parliament at all. Meanwhile, the Alternative for Germany—the AfD, a nationalist, anti-immigration party that Merz had pledged to weaken when he ran for party leadership—has surged. It finished as the largest faction in two of those three recent contests and now has a genuine chance to govern Saxony-Anhalt, despite German authorities classifying it as partly anti-democratic and far-right extremist. Nationally, the AfD leads every opinion poll.

The party's co-leader, Alice Weidel, declared on Monday that the AfD had effectively displaced the CDU as Germany's true catch-all people's party. She blamed Merz for breaking promises on economic growth and immigration control. Inside the CDU, whispers of a palace coup have circulated for weeks. No one will openly challenge him yet, but the machinery of replacement is being quietly assembled. For a country that prizes political stability above almost all else, this kind of upheaval is startling.

Merz's weakness extends beyond his own survival. Even if he remains chancellor, his authority within a fractious coalition government will be severely constrained. On Sunday evening, looking visibly shaken before the full results were even in, he rushed to address the nation on television. He promised tax reform, welfare changes, and economic restructuring. He spoke of needing backbone and patience. But German patience, he may be discovering, has limits.

The roots of this crisis run deeper than Merz's personal unpopularity. Across Europe, voters have grown skeptical of the traditional center-left and center-right parties that have governed since World War Two. The 2007-2008 financial crisis crystallized the resentment: those same parties bailed out banks while ordinary families watched their savings and living standards erode. Then came 2015, when more than one million refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean and moved through Europe, with Germany absorbing roughly one million of them. Integration has been uneven, and a series of high-profile attacks—some by individuals with mental health crises, others linked by authorities to Islamist extremism—have frightened and angered the public. In December, police arrested five people suspected of planning an Islamist attack on a Munich Christmas market.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine added another layer of economic pain. Germany lost access to cheap Russian energy that powered its factories and industries. Donald Trump's trade tariffs and aggressive competition from China have further battered an export-dependent economy that once anchored European prosperity. Germans now pay some of Europe's highest energy bills.

This matters far beyond Berlin. Germany is Europe's largest economy and the eurozone's financial anchor. It is the world's single largest donor to Ukraine, the EU's biggest net contributor, and the bloc's most powerful voice. When Germany turns inward due to political crisis, the consequences ripple across the continent. Merz, under financial pressure, has begun pushing other wealthy EU countries to cut their contributions to the bloc's budget—precisely when Brussels argues the opposite is needed. The EU wants to spend more on defense, migration, artificial intelligence, and technology, not less. Russia and China loom as threats. The Middle East destabilizes energy markets. The United States under Trump is seen by many Europeans as unpredictable and unreliable. This is the moment, Brussels insists, when Europe must bind itself more tightly together.

Instead, Germany is fracturing. The AfD strengthens on the right. The hard-left Die Linke party won in Berlin. And this is only the beginning. Across the EU, major elections loom in France, Italy, Spain, and Poland. Nationalist, Eurosceptic, anti-immigration parties are expected to perform strongly. Moscow and Beijing are watching the unfolding chaos with evident interest.