Friedrich Merz has been leading the CDU for a year now. And he’s had some accomplishments aside from leading the polls. Nevertheless, the question of which direction he actually wants to go in is still open. In an interview with ntv.de, the party leader also talks about where the CDU needs to improve.
ntv.de: Mr. Merz, since this week you have been the federal chairman of the Christian Democratic Union for a year. You can see how much joy you enjoy this work. How did you manage all those years at Blackrock without politics?
Friedrich Merz: I have always liked politics, but it has never been an addictive factor for me. In all my professional positions – Blackrock was only a very small part of it – I’ve always endured it well. I can feel comfortable and happy in my respective task, even away from the public eye.
Isn’t there more to it than “All this makes me happy”?
Yes and no. If you can make an impact in politics and in public debate, also on your audience: Sure, that’s something. But I have always made politics subject to two conditions. One of them was that I never wanted to become financially dependent on it. And a second was that I really wanted to make a difference. In 2009, when I was no longer able to make a difference, my decision was clear.
The effect is back. As the leader of the opposition, you regularly exchange entertaining blows with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Are you satisfied with these duels or do you sometimes bite your teeth off this chancellor?
No, we are both political professionals and we know that we have a role to play in parliamentary debates. Scholz is the chancellor, I am the leader of the opposition, and the main discussion about government policy and the opposition’s alternatives must take place in parliament. I am very happy that we managed last year to make Parliament a place of political debate again.
Does Olaf Scholz face up to this argument sufficiently?
I think no, he doesn’t. For example, last week he should not have leaked the decision on the supply of tanks to the media, but should have combined it with a government statement in the Bundestag the morning immediately after the cabinet decision. Unfortunately, he prefers to avoid Parliament.
As the leader of the opposition, you must criticize Scholz. But would you handle the Ukraine war differently than he did and move forward boldly on the issue of arms deliveries?
Nobody has ever asked us to do that. What we asked for was that he should explain why he said no for so long. And he would also have to face the public debate as to why he is now supplying the battle tanks. To say, “The Americans do it too” is not enough as a justification in my view.
And is it enough to say: “Trust me!”, as Scholz recently did?
No, you have to justify that better in a democracy. This simple sentence is not enough. My approach as leader of the opposition is different from that of Olaf Scholz: I don’t allow essential parts of the leadership – be it in the party or in the parliamentary group – to argue publicly for weeks and months. That’s not good leadership. A federal chancellor can’t let the federal economics minister and the federal finance minister argue about the gas levy for a whole summer, while no one knows what the federal chancellor’s actual opinion is on this subject. A lot of trust in the government and in each other has been damaged.
The Union is ahead in polls, in the RTL and ntv trend barometer the CDU and CSU are 28 percent this week. Is that your most important achievement in your first year as chairman? For me, it was important in 2022 to enable the opposition in the German Bundestag to act. 28 percent is okay for the first year, but that’s not enough. I want us to be stable above 30 percent. Above all, we must become so strong that there is no longer a majority for the governing coalition in the German Bundestag. This government gives us cause for criticism every day. But now we have to come up with even more concepts and ideas of our own. We’re on the right track there, but it will take some time to get there. In 2023 we will focus on the topics and our own proposed solutions.
They were longed for by the Conservatives in the Union, but then initially embarked on a middle course. Then you polarized people again with your appearance at Markus Lanz on New Year’s Eve. In which direction is it going now?
Of course, my choice was associated with both expectations and fears. I have to keep the whole party together, I’m not the leader of a wing. That rules out an extreme course in one direction or the other. We still have to take a clear stance on factual issues, that’s not a contradiction in terms. Often only excerpts were shown from the television program mentioned, and excerpts that simply left out important sentences of mine were used to set the mood. I have made very differentiated statements on the subject of immigration and we will now make very differentiated proposals on this. However, the Union will also make its position clear on irregular immigration.
We expected a plain text analysis from the Union after the New Year’s Eve riots, “little pashas” or not. But you also said that these are people “they have no place in this country and we won’t deport them”. However, many suspects had a German passport or were born in Germany. This problem cannot simply be dismissed.
Here we are at the crucial point in the debate. Check out Berlin. There is a problem with clan crime here. Some of them are stateless, some Lebanese or other nationals. Most do not have dual citizenship. But at the same time, the state of Berlin is closing the deportation terminal at the airport. The red-red-green Senate has apparently resigned to the problem, but things can’t go on like this. That is why we as a Union must say even more clearly: There are immigrants who have committed criminal offenses in Germany and who do not need protection. Then they have to leave the country. You can’t seriously argue about that.
You don’t have to, but your criticism of Lanz was very general.
No, on the contrary, I expressed myself very differently on the show. And I’ve talked to many immigrants who have been living here for 30 or 40 years, some of them second and third generation. They are just as appalled by these riots. I believe that only by taking a consistent approach can we do justice to the vast majority of immigrants who behave in accordance with the law. No country in the world can afford to allow large numbers of delinquent foreigners on its territory, especially if they have long been obliged to leave the country.
At the closed conference in Weimar you also declared yourself to be a climate protection party. Has the grassroots level got enough of the importance of this issue?
We wrote a paper with eight points. That is a beginning. We also want to give very different answers to these issues than the Greens, because although we have the same goal, we make completely different proposals for how to get there. For example when it comes to technology. The Greens often fundamentally reject new technologies. On the other hand, as the CDU, we said that we would like to focus on CCS and CCU, for example, i.e. CO2 recovery from the air, CO2 storage in the soil and recycling of CO2 as a raw material. We want to open up a 360-degree view of climate issues, but also of energy and economic issues. I think we’re doing that quite well.
But in the CDU you are most likely to find those who speak of climate terrorists and do not take the issue seriously.
We say very clearly: commitment to climate protection must take place within our legal system and not in a legal vacuum. I don’t endorse every word, but we don’t believe that sticking to the streets or arguing with the system will solve any problem. Our answer is: more engineers and fewer ideologues are needed to meet the challenges of climate change.
The Greens are an important coalition option for the Union. Are you okay at all? Or are you polarizing too much, with private planes, Pascha debates and so on?
Coalition questions do not arise today. We’ll answer them when they come up. As far as the Greens are concerned: we will see that they and the entire coalition with their type of climate policy do not achieve the goals, neither in the expansion of renewable energies nor in avoiding CO2. At our closed conference in Weimar we said: Firstly yes to avoidance. Second: Yes to recycling and storing CO2. We don’t agree with the Greens on that. And thirdly, we said that we will only solve the climate problem with the latest and most modern technologies. Here, too, the Greens still have some catching up to do.
Does that mean you want to expand wind and solar even faster than the Greens?
We would remove some of the hurdles that we still have today, especially when it comes to solar power. The federal government made the first laws, the Easter package and the wind-on-shore law. The big question is how we deal with the land conflicts that arise from this. In North Rhine-Westphalia there is the difficult situation that landowners will soon have the right to build on damaged forest areas in any direction. However, this would be associated with considerable restrictions for landscape protection areas and for regions with tourism. We need to resolve these land conflicts. Above all, however, we must talk about base load power supply for the next ten years. Wind alone will not be the solution, and neither will solar.
Which brings us to nuclear power.
We have spoken out in favor of keeping the existing nuclear power plants running until at least the end of 2024. They are baseloadable. We will probably also have to keep gas and coal-fired power plants running longer. But what do we do with the CO2 then? That brings us back to the topic of using CO2. We need to capture, store and reuse it.
As CDU leader, you are a natural candidate for chancellor. Do you let yourself be inspired by the Greens when choosing the chancellor candidate? The party wants to vote on it. Armin Laschet has also called for the Union to come up with something new.
I understand that you are interested in this, but nobody here cares. It is now the beginning of 2023. We will answer this question together with the CSU in good time before the next federal election.
Do you want to clarify the procedural question only then?
We have a very important date, that is next year’s European elections. By then we must have our basic program ready. Before that there will be a big party conference, that’s what we’re concentrating on. After the European elections, this question will come more to the fore, but certainly not before then.
Has the Söder party already forgiven him for torpedoing Laschet’s election campaign?
The dispute of 2021 is already quite deep. Many in the CDU and also in the CSU have not forgotten that. Markus Söder and I agree that we will not repeat that.
We’re wondering if there will be breakfast at your place in Arnsberg, where Mr. Söder will propose your candidacy.
Oh, we’ll see when the time comes. Until then, there are no limits to your imagination.
Sebastian Huld and Volker Petersen spoke to Friedrich Merz
Read in the first part of the interview why Merz still expects a longer war in Ukraine, but he doesn’t believe in a nuclear strike.
