Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz (born 11November 1955) is a German politician, who has served as Chancellor of Germany since 6 May 2025. He has also served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since January 2022, leading the CDU/CSU (Union) parliamentary group as Leader of the Opposition in the Bundestag from February 2022 to May 2025.
Merz was born in Brilon in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in West Germany. He joined the Young Union in 1972. After finishing law school in 1985, Merz worked as a judge and corporate lawyer before entering full-time politics in 1989 when he was elected to the European Parliament. As a young politician in the 1970s and 1980s, Merz was a staunch supporter of anti-communism, the dominant political doctrine of West Germany and a core tenet of the CDU. He is seen as a representative of the traditional establishment conservative and pro-business wings of the CDU. His book Mehr Kapitalismus wagen (Venturing More Capitalism) advocates economic liberalism. After serving one term he was elected to the Bundestag, where he established himself as the leading financial policy expert in the CDU. He was elected chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in 2000, the same year as Angela Merkel was elected chairwoman of the CDU, and at the time they were chief rivals for the leadership of the party, which led the opposition together with CSU.
After the 2002 federal election, Merkel claimed the parliamentary group chairmanship for herself, while Merz was elected deputy parliamentary group leader. In December 2004, he resigned from this office, thereby giving up the years-long power struggle with Merkel and gradually withdrew from politics, focusing on his legal career and leaving parliament entirely in 2009, until his return to parliament in 2021. In 2004, he became a senior counsel at Mayer Brown, where he focused on mergers and acquisitions, banking and finance, and compliance. He has served on the boards of numerous companies, including BlackRock Germany. A corporate lawyer and reputed multimillionaire, Merz is also a licensed private pilot and owns two aeroplanes. In 2018, he announced his return to politics. He was elected CDU leader in December 2021, assuming the office in January 2022. He had failed to win the position in two previous leadership elections in 2018, and January 2021. In September 2024, he became the Union's candidate for Chancellor of Germany ahead of the following year's federal election. The CDU/CSU won a plurality of the seats and subsequently reached an agreement to form a coalition with the SPD. Merz was elected chancellor on 6 May 2025, taking two rounds to clear, which was a first in German history.
As chancellor, he has taken steps to ensure fiscal responsibility and border security. An early issue that arose at the start of his chancellorship has been the designation of the AfD as extremist. In foreign policy, he is a staunch supporter of the European Union, NATO, and the liberal international order, having described himself as "truly European, a convinced Transatlanticist, and a German open to the world". Merz advocates a closer union and "an army for Europe". Prior to the second presidency of Donald Trump, he was frequently described as being "exceptionally pro-American", and was once the chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke association which promotes German-American friendship and Atlanticism. Domestically, Merz's proposed welfare cuts and reforms have drawn criticism. His approval ratings fell sharply during his first year in office; in May 2026, he recorded the lowest level of satisfaction ever measured for a German chancellor by the , a monthly national opinion poll.
Early life and education
Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz was born on 11 November 1955 to Joachim Merz and Paula Sauvigny in Brilon in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in West Germany. His father Joachim Merz, born on 7 January 1924Handbuch der Justiz 1960, NrhW Spalte 94, is a retired judge and was a member of the CDU. The Sauvigny family was a locally prominent patrician family in Brilon, of French ancestry. His maternal grandfather was Brilon mayor , who joined the Nazi Party in 1937. Merz is Catholic.Claus Jacobi, Im Rad der Geschichte: Deutsche Verhältnisse, pg. 166, Herbig, 2002. Two of his three siblings died relatively early: his younger sister died at the age of 21 in a traffic accident and his brother died of multiple sclerosis before the age of 50.
From 1966 to 1971, Merz attended the Petrinum Grammar School in Brilon, which he left for disciplinary reasons, moving to the Friedrich-Spee Grammar School in Rüthen, where he finished his Abitur in 1975. From July 1975 to September 1976 Merz served his military service as a soldier with a self-propelled artillery unit of the German Army. From 1976 he studied law with a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, first at the University of Bonn, later at the University of Marburg. At Bonn he was a member of , a Catholic student fraternity founded in 1844 that is part of the Cartellverband. After finishing law school in 1985, he became a District Court judge in Saarbrücken. In 1986, he left his position in order to work as an in-house attorney-at-law at the German Chemical Industry Association in Bonn and Frankfurt from 1986 to 1989.
Early political career
In 1972, at the age of seventeen, he became a member of the CDU's youth wing, the Young Union. In 1980 he became President of the Brilon branch of the Young Union.
Member of the European Parliament (1989–1994) Merz successfully ran as a candidate in the 1989 European Parliament election and served one term as a Member of the European Parliament until 1994. He was a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and of the parliament's delegation for relations with Malta.
Member of the Bundestag (1994–2009) From the 1994 German elections, he served as member of the Bundestag for his constituency, the Hochsauerland. In his first term, he was a member of the Finance Committee.
In October 1998 Merz became vice-chairman and in February 2000 Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group (alongside Michael Glos), succeeding Wolfgang Schäuble. In this capacity, he was the opposition leader in the Bundestag during Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's first term.
Ahead of the 2002 elections, Edmund Stoiber included Merz in his shadow cabinet for the Christian Democrats' campaign to unseat incumbent Schröder as chancellor. During the campaign, Merz served as Stoiber's expert for financial markets and the national budget. After Stoiber's electoral defeat, Angela Merkel assumed the leadership of the parliamentary group; Merz again served as vice-chairman until 2004. From 2002 to 2004, he was also a member of the executive board of the CDU, again under the leadership of Merkel.
In 2004, Merz gave a speech to local constituents criticising the "red" (Social Democratic) mayor of his hometown, Brilon, and called for the "red town hall" to be stormed. He noted that his grandfather, , had been mayor of Brilon. This statement drew criticism, for Sauvigny had been a mayor under Nazi rule. While it is not known whether he was a formal member of the Nazi Party at the time (though he joined later), Sauvigny remained mayor after the Nazis seized power and repressed their political opponents. During his tenure, he praised the Nazi "national revolution" and renamed streets in his town after Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring.
In 2005 he was described by German media as a new member of the , an informal network of CDU men formed in 1979 by then members of the Young Union during a trip to the South American Andes region. The Andean pact stood in opposition to Merkel, especially in the five years before she became chancellor in 2005, after she had become chairperson of the CDU. Years before his admission, Merz had already a "fundamental loyalty" to his peers in the Andean Pact. Between 2005 and 2009, Merz was a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs. In 2006, he was one of nine parliamentarians who filed a complaint at the Federal Constitutional Court against the disclosure of additional sources of income; the complaint was ultimately unsuccessful. By 2007, he announced he would not be running for political office in the 2009 elections.
Private sector career (2009–2018) Upon leaving politics, Merz worked as a corporate lawyer. From 2004 he was a Senior Counsel at Mayer Brown's Düsseldorf office, where he worked on the corporate finance team; before 2004 he was a senior counsel with Cornelius Bartenbach Haesemann.
Between 2010 and 2011, Merz was commissioned by the state's Financial Market Stabilization Fund (Soffin) to lead the sale of WestLB, a bank majority-controlled by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, to a private investor. He was criticized in the media for his multi-million-euro salary, as he received a fee of €5,000 per day for unsuccessful work, including Saturdays and Sundays, totaling €1,980,000 from taxpayers.
His work as a lawyer and board member has made him a multimillionaire. He has also taken on numerous positions on corporate boards, including as successor to deceased politicians:
Robert Bosch GmbH, member of International Advisory Committee (since 2011) WEPA Hygieneprodukte GmbH, chairman of the supervisory board (since 2009) Deutsche Rockwool, member of the Supervisory Board Ernst & Young Germany, member of the Advisory Board Odewald & Compagnie, member of the Advisory Board DBV-Winterthur Holding, member of the Supervisory Board Cologne Bonn Airport, chairman of the supervisory board (2017–2020) BlackRock Germany, chairman of the supervisory board (2016–2020) Stadler Rail, member of the Board of Directors (2006–2020) HSBC Trinkaus, chairman of the advisory board (2010–2019) Borussia Dortmund, member of the supervisory board (2010–2014) Axa Konzern AG, member of the supervisory board (2007–2014) IVG Immobilien, member of the supervisory board (2006–2010) Deutsche Börse, member of the supervisory board (2005–2015) Interseroh, member of the supervisory board (2005–2009)
In 2012, he joined Norbert Röttgen's campaign team for the North Rhine-Westphalia state election as advisor on economic policy. He served as a CDU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2012 and in 2017.
In November 2017, Merz was appointed by Minister-President Armin Laschet of North Rhine-Westphalia as his Commissioner for Brexit and Transatlantic Relations, an unpaid advisory position.
Return to politics After Angela Merkel announced her intention to step down as leader of the CDU party, Merz announced he would run in the subsequent 2018 party leadership election. His candidacy was promoted by the former CDU chairman and "crown prince" of the Kohl era, Wolfgang Schäuble (former President of the Bundestag, ranked second in federal precedence). On 7 December 2018, in the second round of the leadership election, Merz was defeated by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
On 25 February 2020, he announced his candidacy in the first 2021 CDU leadership election. His closest competitors were Armin Laschet and Norbert Röttgen. After several postponements, the election of the new CDU party president took place at the party congress on 15–16 January 2021, which was the first time in the party's history that it was held fully online. In the first round, Merz received 385 votes, 5 more than Laschet. In the second round, Merz failed to win the party president's post for the second time, receiving 466 votes out of 1001 delegates, while Laschet received 521 votes.