Should Germany’s Chancellor Resign?

By Matthew Parish

Tuesday 29 September 2026

Germany has suddenly acquired a political problem that is considerably larger than Friedrich Merz. During September 2026, the Alternative für Deutschland has achieved extraordinary results in eastern German state elections, while Merz’s Christian Democratic Union has suffered defeats of a magnitude that would until recently have seemed implausible. The question being asked in Berlin is therefore an obvious one: has the Chancellor lost sufficient political authority that his departure ought now to be contemplated?

It is tempting to treat this as an ordinary question about political responsibility. Governments lose elections, leaders become unpopular and eventually parties replace them. Yet contemporary Germany is not an ordinary European political case. She remains the largest economy in the European Union, a central pillar of NATO’s European architecture and one of Ukraine’s most important military and financial supporters. Germany’s political direction therefore affects not merely German domestic government but the strategic balance of the entire European continent.

The facts facing Merz are nevertheless exceptionally uncomfortable. In the September ARD-DeutschlandTREND, only 15 per cent of respondents expressed satisfaction with the work of the CDU/CSU-SPD federal coalition, while 84 per cent were dissatisfied. Merz’s own approval figure stood at just 13 per cent. In the same survey, the AfD stood at 27 per cent nationally against 21 per cent for the CDU/CSU. Other polling later in September placed the AfD still higher. These are snapshots rather than elections, but the direction of political travel is difficult to dismiss.

Then came the elections themselves. On 6 September, the AfD emerged first in Saxony-Anhalt and came close to an absolute majority in the state parliament. Merz reportedly told the CDU leadership that the result had shaken the party “to its very foundations”. Two weeks later came another severe reverse: the AfD finished first in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the CDU recorded its worst state-election performance of the post-war period. Merz himself described that result as a “disaster”.

These developments cannot sensibly be reduced to the personality of one Chancellor. Germany is experiencing a deeper political realignment. Economic stagnation, anxiety about industrial decline, energy prices, migration, pensions and the cost of living have combined with growing distrust of established political institutions. Reuters’ reporting from Saxony-Anhalt found particularly intense dissatisfaction over social insecurity, economic conditions and the government’s direction, while the AfD proved especially successful among workers, younger voters and men.

The problem for the traditional German political establishment is therefore structural. For decades, the Federal Republic operated through a comparatively narrow spectrum of parties committed to European integration, Atlanticism, the social market economy and the constitutional settlement established after 1949. Governments changed, but the fundamentals of German statecraft changed remarkably little. Germany became powerful precisely because German politics became predictable.

That predictability is now being tested.

The AfD and the European question

The rise of the AfD matters internationally because its foreign-policy assumptions differ significantly from those of the present government. Merz has strongly supported Ukraine and has presented European security as inseparable from German national security. His government has continued substantial defence cooperation with Kyiv, including programmes involving drones, air defence and other military technologies.

The AfD advocates a markedly different approach. It has called for restoring relations with Moscow, renewing access to Russian energy and ending German military assistance to Ukraine. The Kremlin has publicly welcomed the AfD’s preference for renewed dialogue, and Reuters reported this month that preparations were under way for contacts concerning the possible restoration of Russian gas supplies.

That distinction is particularly important because the European security environment is simultaneously becoming less certain. Questions about the long-term American commitment to European defence have encouraged European states to increase military expenditure and explore greater strategic autonomy. Germany’s size means that any serious European attempt to construct a stronger continental defence architecture almost inevitably requires German participation.

Merz has explicitly embraced that argument. In June he told the Bundestag that Germany’s future was inseparable from that of Europe, arguing that the EU must become militarily, economically and politically more resilient. His government has accordingly connected domestic economic reform, German rearmament and European strategic autonomy into a single political programme.

The contemporary German political crisis therefore possesses an unusual geopolitical dimension. A weakening of Merz is not simply a matter of one politician becoming unpopular. It raises questions in Warsaw, Paris, Brussels, Kyiv and Moscow about the future direction of Europe’s most economically powerful state.

The argument for departure

There is nevertheless a substantial democratic argument for changing leadership when a Chancellor’s political authority deteriorates severely. Germany’s system is parliamentary rather than presidential. A Chancellor governs because he commands a Bundestag majority, not because he possesses an independent personal mandate lasting for a fixed presidential term.

Supporters of a leadership change might therefore argue that retaining an intensely unpopular Chancellor risks making matters worse. If voters increasingly associate Merz personally with economic insecurity, unpopular reforms and political paralysis, keeping him in office could deepen the rejection of the governing parties. Reuters reported after the Saxony-Anhalt election that three quarters of those surveyed there believed Merz had damaged the CDU’s performance, including almost half of CDU supporters.

There is also a question of political responsiveness. Democracy cannot operate indefinitely by telling voters that their preferences are mistaken. If millions of Germans are moving towards the AfD, the established parties have to understand why. Some voters may be motivated principally by migration, others by economic dissatisfaction, opposition to support for Ukraine, cultural resentment or hostility towards established institutions. These motivations are not identical and treating the entire AfD electorate as a single ideological category may obscure more than it explains.

A change of Chancellor could consequently be presented as an attempt by the CDU to reset its relationship with voters while preserving the broader constitutional and European orientation of German government. Political parties routinely change leaders precisely because institutions are supposed to be more durable than the people temporarily occupying their highest offices.

There is nothing inherently undemocratic about such a development. Indeed Germany’s Basic Law specifically anticipates changes of Chancellor between federal elections. Under Article 67, the Bundestag can remove a Chancellor through a constructive vote of no confidence, but only by simultaneously electing a successor. The mechanism was deliberately designed to prevent the governmental instability associated with the Weimar Republic.

The argument for remaining

Yet there is an equally serious problem with assuming that removing Merz would solve the underlying crisis. It might do nothing of the kind.

The first difficulty is identifying what would actually change. Germany’s economic problems would remain. Its demographic pressures would remain. Industrial restructuring would continue. Migration would remain politically contentious. Russia would still represent a profound security question for Europe, Ukraine would still require decisions about military assistance and Germany would still face pressure to assume a greater share of European defence expenditure.

Changing the Chancellor without changing any of those realities might therefore amount principally to changing the face attached to them.

There is also a strategic danger in allowing every successful AfD regional election campaign to determine the tenure of the federal Chancellor. The AfD has explicitly called for Merz’s resignation. Were the Chancellor to depart immediately after spectacular AfD successes, some voters could interpret the sequence as evidence that electoral pressure upon the established parties can force leadership changes even without a federal election or a change in the Bundestag majority. That interpretation could strengthen rather than diminish the AfD’s political momentum.

The constitutional structure of Germany is relevant here. The Federal Republic was deliberately designed to make governments difficult to destabilise. A Chancellor cannot simply be voted out because a temporary parliamentary majority dislikes him; the Bundestag must be capable of agreeing upon somebody else. The purpose of the constructive vote of no confidence is precisely to ensure that dissatisfaction does not automatically become governmental chaos.

There is therefore an important distinction between political unpopularity and parliamentary incapacity. Merz’s polling numbers are exceptionally poor, but polling numbers do not themselves determine whether a Chancellor can govern. The constitution asks a different question: is there another person capable of commanding a majority in the Bundestag?

At present those two questions should not be confused.

The firewall problem

Behind the debate lies another issue that German politics can no longer indefinitely avoid: the so-called Brandmauer, or firewall, under which the established parties refuse political cooperation with the AfD.

The principle has preserved the AfD’s isolation from executive power even as its electoral strength has increased. After the September state elections, the party remained unable to form governments despite finishing first because other parties continued to refuse coalition arrangements with it.

Yet the stronger the AfD becomes, the more complicated the arithmetic becomes. If a party regularly receives somewhere between one quarter and one third of votes, excluding it from coalitions requires increasingly broad alliances amongst everybody else. Conservatives may find themselves governing with Social Democrats, Greens or other parties whose economic and social programmes differ substantially from their own.

That creates a paradox. The firewall may prevent the AfD from entering government, while simultaneously creating governing coalitions so ideologically broad that voters perceive them as incapable of decisive action. That perception can in turn increase support for the AfD.

Germany therefore confronts a problem without an obvious parliamentary solution. Abandoning the firewall carries one set of profound political consequences. Maintaining it while the AfD continues to grow carries another. Replacing Friedrich Merz does not make this dilemma disappear.

Germany’s eastern divide

The regional dimension deserves particular attention. The AfD’s strongest performances have occurred in the former East Germany, where attitudes towards Russia, NATO, migration and the federal political establishment frequently differ from those in western Germany.

Those differences have historical roots. Economic dislocation following reunification, demographic decline, migration from eastern regions towards western cities and a persistent perception that national institutions are dominated by western German elites have all contributed to a distinctive political culture. More than three decades after reunification, Germany remains politically less unified than its constitutional structure suggests.

Foreign policy has become entangled with that division. Recent polling reported by Deutsche Welle indicates that eastern Germans tend to perceive the Russian threat differently from Germans nationally, while opposition to military assistance for Ukraine is stronger there.

For Ukraine, this matters enormously. Germany has become one of Kyiv’s indispensable European partners. A German political realignment that produced a substantially different policy towards Russia would alter calculations far beyond Berlin. Moscow understands this perfectly, which helps explain the attention Russian officials devote to Germany’s evolving political landscape.

The danger of the wrong question

This is why asking simply whether Friedrich Merz should resign may ultimately be too narrow a way of understanding what is happening.

The more consequential question is whether Germany’s existing political centre can reconstruct a governing proposition capable of attracting voters who are abandoning it. That requires more than changing leaders. It requires credible answers about industrial competitiveness, energy, migration, social security, defence and Germany’s relationship with the rest of Europe.

Merz’s personal position is inevitably part of that calculation because political leadership matters. Yet replacing a Chancellor cannot substitute for resolving the conditions that made the Chancellor unpopular.

There is also a danger in imagining that the German shift to the right is an isolated phenomenon. Similar movements have transformed politics elsewhere in Europe. Questions about migration, sovereignty, economic insecurity, environmental regulation and relations with Brussels increasingly cut across the traditional distinction between centre-left and centre-right politics. Germany may therefore be experiencing its version of a broader European restructuring rather than merely a temporary rebellion against one government.

If that is correct, changing Chancellor might alter the speed or presentation of the process without necessarily changing its underlying direction.

Europe waits for Germany

For most of the post-war period, Europe’s partners wanted Germany to exercise restraint. The historical problem was how to accommodate German power within a European order without allowing Germany to dominate it.

The contemporary problem is almost the reverse. Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine increasingly require Germany to exercise power: to manufacture weapons, finance European defence, maintain economic resilience and provide political weight against Russian pressure. France requires a functioning German partner if the traditional Franco-German engine of European integration is to retain meaning. Smaller European states require Berlin to help sustain a European order that may no longer be able to assume unlimited American strategic support.

Germany’s domestic political instability therefore arrives at an unusually inconvenient moment.

This does not determine what ought to happen to Friedrich Merz. It does mean that the relevant calculation extends beyond his approval ratings. The consequences of continuity and leadership change alike would have to be judged against Germany’s capacity to maintain a workable parliamentary majority, conduct economic reform, preserve democratic legitimacy and provide predictable European leadership.

The September elections have demonstrated that something significant is changing in Germany. The AfD is no longer a peripheral protest phenomenon whose success can be explained away as an occasional regional aberration. At the same time, its electoral strength has not yet translated into federal executive power, and the parliamentary majority supporting the present government continues to possess constitutional significance.

Whether Germany changes Chancellor is ultimately a matter for her parliamentary institutions and political parties. The deeper issue is whether changing the occupant of the Chancellery would address the political forces now reshaping the country, or merely acknowledge them.

That distinction matters far beyond Germany. The argument unfolding in Berlin concerns the future of German conservatism, the durability of the post-war party system, relations with Russia, assistance to Ukraine and the strategic capacity of Europe itself. In that sense the question is not merely whether Friedrich Merz can survive.

It is what sort of Germany will emerge from the political upheaval that has made his survival a question in the first place.