Friedrich Merz and his long march to the German chancellery

By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN (Reuters) - Friedrich Merz, a man who has never held a government role, is preparing to take the reins in Germany just as the country faces its biggest economic and diplomatic crises in decades and Europe looks urgently for a new generation of leaders for an era of transatlantic tension.

Merz's conservatives came first in Germany's national election on Sunday, according to projected results, well ahead of their closest rival, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), giving him a mandate to form a coalition government.

"Germany will once more be governed reliably," he told supporters on Sunday evening.

The results spell an unlikely third-act triumph for the 69-year-old, who just seven years ago was seen as a failed politician fully reconciled to ending his career as a wealthy lobbyist and member of numerous company boards.

A protege of the late Wolfgang Schaeuble, finance minister and icon of German fiscal conservatism, Merz enjoyed a meteoric rise through his Christian Democrats, becoming the party's parliamentary leader in the 2000s.

Tall and with a sonorous voice, the arch-conservative Merz was a perfect figure for the party in 1989 - when he first won elected office for the European Parliament.

Hailing from the Sauerland, a Catholic upland region in far western Germany known for its social conservatism and close-knit village communities, he embodied many of the virtues of West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall - transatlanticist, business-oriented and socially conservative.

However, reunification in 1990 allowed Angela Merkel, the East German daughter of a protestant pastor, to enter politics and elbow both Schaeuble and Merz aside on her rise to become chancellor.

The east continues to be Merz's weak spot. A Forsa poll on Friday showed that unlike his Social Democrat and Green rivals, this distinctly Rhineland figure is still far less trusted in the east than the west.

It is also the east that gave rise to the greatest challenge to Merz's authority in the guise of the far-right AfD, which took first place in one eastern regional election last year and could yet greatly constrain his ability to govern after the elections.

Never the favourite of his party's professional advisers, Merz was twice rejected as Merkel's successor as party leader, in 2018 and 2021, before his doggedness won out in 2022.

He took office pledging to kill off the nativist AfD by breaking with Merkel's centrism and moving the party rightwards. The AfD, on 10% when he took office, won some 20% in Sunday's election, according to projected results.

"I want to do politics so that a party like the AfD is no longer needed in Germany," he told a congress of his conservatives in January, blaming the Social Democrat Scholz and his Green partners for creating the conditions that nurtured the AfD.

In January, responding to two high-profile killings in which immigrants were the main suspects, he manoeuvred to get a resolution demanding a clampdown on migration through parliament, knowing that it would only pass with AfD support.

Critics, even in his own ranks, saw this as an unforgivable breach of a political quarantine designed to keep the AfD out of power.

For some, it was a case of Merz's strategic sense not matching the acute tactical skills that enabled him to repeatedly pin down Scholz, first with a 2022 visit to Kyiv that exposed the chancellor's hesitancy on supporting Ukraine, and then by getting a court to strike down a budget, setting in motion the chain of events that collapsed Scholz's government.

The migration vote created a lingering sense of distrust, and fueled concerns that he may struggle to persuade other parties to govern with him, a necessity in Germany's proportional electoral system.

"I don't want to suggest Merz plans (a coalition with the AfD), but I have to say my personal confidence that he won't do it after the election if that's his only way of becoming Chancellor - that's gone," said Ulf Buermeyer, host of the popular and influential podcast State of the Nation.

THE PRICE OF POLITICS

Some internal critics grudgingly sense his Atlanticism, excellent spoken English and negotiating skills honed in the boardrooms in which he served during his political hiatus make him a good candidate for the Trump era.

An early and outspoken backer of supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, he has said he would under some circumstances send Kyiv the high-end Taurus missiles that Scholz has always blocked.

On fiscal policy, his policies are equally ill-defined, but he has suggested he is open to reforming constitutionally-enshrined debt limits that doomed Scholz's government and have hampered attempts to boost military spending.

For all that, he is in many ways an old-fashioned figure from the time before he left politics for a lucrative second career at Blackrock that made the hobby pilot wealthy enough to own an aeroplane.

Parts of his policy agenda are reactive: he has pledged to scrap an unemployment benefit and easier citizenship rules introduced by Scholz's coalition, and to introduce tougher border controls.

He once told an interviewer that he would leave politics if it ever placed his 40-year-marriage, to Charlotte, a judge, under strain. "For me that price would be too high," he said.

If he takes office, he will be the first chancellor with children, and the first not previously divorced, since Helmut Kohl left office in 1998.

He has been assiduous about building contacts with the European leaders who would be his peers, with some welcoming the prospect of an end to Scholz's divided and indecisive government.

"Almost undiplomatic," was how one European diplomat described the enthusiasm with which Paris was awaiting Merz's arrival.

Last weekend's Munich Security Conference saw him doing the rounds of European leaders and holding meetings with U.S. Vice-President JD Vance and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

But world leaders may have to wait: with polls showing a real chance of a parliament with as many as seven parties, Germany could be in for many months of fractious coalition talks before Merz walks into Berlin's riverside chancellery.

(Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris, Barbara Erling in Warsaw and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Editing by Toby Chopra and Keith Weir)