Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a Christian Democratic Union gathering in Düsseldorf late on Wednesday that "Germany has the strength for a new beginning" and rejected the suggestion that his persistently weak polling could prompt his own party to seek a leadership change. The speech, broadcast in full by ZDF, came after a week of public reporting that senior CDU figures had begun internal discussions over a potential mid-term replacement candidate.
Merz's personal approval rating sank to twenty-three per cent in this week's ARD-DeutschlandTrend survey, the lowest reading of any sitting chancellor since the survey began in 1997. The CDU/CSU bloc and its SPD coalition partner have between them polled at thirty-eight per cent combined in the most recent INSA poll, against thirty-five per cent for the Alternative for Germany, which has continued to consolidate the protest vote.
In a speech that ran for forty-five minutes, Merz framed his administration's programme around four planks: an industrial-energy package designed to bring power prices down for manufacturers, a one-hundred-billion-euro infrastructure fund that has passed the Bundestag but not yet begun disbursing, an EU-level push to reduce regulatory burden on European companies, and a reaffirmation of support for Ukraine and the Bundeswehr modernisation programme.
On Europe, Merz returned to the theme of "overregulation" that he has made a centrepiece of his EU diplomacy. He said European companies were structurally disadvantaged against US and Chinese competitors and that the European Union should accept "the cost of taking risks" in artificial intelligence, biotech and clean energy. The line drew applause from the CDU base but has been criticised by the Greens and by EU competition officials as a step away from common rules.
Domestic critics inside the party were more equivocal. Hesse minister-president Boris Rhein, a frequent rival of Merz on internal questions, told reporters after the speech that the chancellor had "made his case clearly" but added that the CDU would need to "continue to listen carefully to its voters." The Bild tabloid reported earlier in the week that CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann had begun informal consultations on potential mid-term scenarios.
The opposition was sharper. SPD coalition partners largely held their tongues in public, but Greens leader Felix Banaszak said Merz's emphasis on deregulation amounted to "outsourcing climate failures to the next generation," and AfD parliamentary chief Alice Weidel called the speech "an admission of failure dressed up as a new beginning." Polling firms said this weekend's state surveys in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia would offer the first hard read on whether the speech had moved any voters.