On Friedrich Merz’ office desk at the party headquarters of his center-left Christian Democratic Union (CDU) stands a black-and-white photograph of Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer attending mass together at Reims cathedral in 1962. That tells you a lot about how Merz views himself, the Franco-German relationship, and Europe.
69-year-old Merz taking history as a guide also reveals some striking similarities to France’s 47-year-old President Emmanuel Macron. Both have a romantic view of politics where larger-than-life men rise to the challenge and, if necessary, take highly unpopular decisions to assure their country’s future.
Merz’ emblematic example is from 1982, after the Soviets had installed medium-range SS-20 missiles on European soil. Millions of Germans protested center-left Social Democrat (SPD) Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s decision to deploy US Pershing II missiles launchers to uphold deterrence. There is hardly a foreign policy speech by Merz where he doesn’t voice his admiration of Schmidt for doing the right thing.
For his part, Macron has a small portrait of de Gaulle in a bronze frame on his desk. Arguably, no French leader since the general himself has gone to such lengths to convince an often blasé Germany to reengage with France. From telling lawmakers in the German Bundestag literally “France loves you” in 2018 to taking German lessons in 2024 to giving speeches in the language of Goethe, Macron has tried to use all his charm to reignite the Franco-German engine. Like Merz, Macron is driven by a deep ambition to enter the history books. Both know they can only make it happen together.
And chances are that in his final two years as French president, Macron will now have a partner in Berlin who thinks that the moment of Europe’s coming of age has truly arrived, and that the task of today’s European leaders is to face the future instead of trying to prolong the past.
Deterrence
The key to understanding the possibly history-making new Franco-German tandem is the link between Macron and Merz: Wolfgang Schäuble.
The legendary CDU powerbroker, minister in the governments of Chancellors Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel, and a friend of France, passed away in 2023. Among Schäuble’s last wishes: Macron should mark his death with a speech to the Bundestag, while Merz should hold the main address at the church service.
Indeed, Merz and Macron share key markers of Schäubleism, including the conviction that “the end of history” was an illusion and that Europeans will have to assure their own defense. For years, Schäuble argued that Germany should slip under France’s nuclear umbrella and pay for it. He even made it the key theme of his last interview before his death.
More broadly, Merz stands in Schäuble’s realist tradition that is also Macron’s.
In a 2018 interview, Macron had the chutzpah to say this: “Paradoxically, it renders me optimistic that history is becoming tragic once again. Europe will no longer be protected as it has been since World War II. This old continent of petits-bourgeoisie sheltering in material comfort is embarking on a new adventure where tragedy beckons.” During the recent German election campaign, Merz stated: “Peace you can find in any cemetery. It is our freedom that we must defend.”
Merz, the long-standing member of the shooting club in his home town of Brilon, in western Germany, believes in deterrence rather than Wandel durch Handel (“change through trade”) championed by Merkel and the SPD. Merz had made the case for higher defense spending long before Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech in February 2022. Thinking war will return to Europe, Macron has increased the defense budget every year since taking office in 2017.
Two Think-Tankers-in-Chief
In fact, both Macron and Merz have been proven right on most other geopolitical questions in recent years.
Both opposed the construction of Nord Stream II after Russia’s first invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2022, Merz opposed the sale of a Hamburg port terminal to a Chinese state-owned company, which Scholz pushed through despite opposition from his coalition partners, the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP). During the campaign, Merz publicly warned German companies against increasing investments in China. Macron, for his part, was the key driver behind the EU’s foreign direct investment screening mechanism targeting Beijing, adopted in 2019. Macron also skillfully killed the controversial EU-China investment agreement (CAI) that Merkel wanted to leave as a legacy.
And both Macron and Merz warned that former US President Joe Biden’s administration was likely to turn out to be a short-lived sigh of relief for Europeans.
In May 2024, Merz said that anything but Trump’s reelection would be a surprise. He consistently attacked Scholz for walking in lockstep with Biden on Ukraine instead of choosing a more assertive, independent path with Paris and London. At the Élysée, the base case was always that Trump would return. Thus, when France took on the EU’s rotating presidency in 2022, Macron placed the whole focus on defense issues.
With Merz, Macron has a worthy competitor now for the role of Europe’s think tanker-in-chief. And that “Mercron 2.0” (Mercron 1.0 was the overall ill-fated alliance of Merkel and Macron) share the view of the world as a frosty place where Europe has to fight for its relevance.
Talkers
The French president and German chancellor-in-waiting also have a similar attitude when it comes to a politician’s key tools: rhetoric and action.
When Merz said on national TV right after his narrow election victory that Europe must, step by step, make itself independent from the US in security terms, this was a wake-up call for his fellow citizens … and a typical Macron move. Like Macron, Merz believes that words are not neutral, that they not only describe things, but shape the reality we live in. On occasions, a politician has to use words like “bombs” in order to kick-start new political dynamics and lead on public opinion.
The downside: Merz and Macron, at times, speak faster than they think. They like to spell out grand visions without having thought through all contingencies or how to realize them in the first place. Merz wants Europe to become independent, but neither he nor anyone else in Berlin really has a fully thought-out plan on how to get there.
And for Macron and Merz, their rhetorical quick-wittedness and mirror-gazing comes back to bite them on occasion. The examples of Merz and Macron making rash and self-important comments that disgruntle allies and unproductive are legion.
Moreover, Germans are not used to leaders with a sharp tongue and a lack of discipline. In Germany, voters want politicians to be affable rather than sophisticated. Kohl and Merkel, Germany’s politically most successful chancellors in recent times, were both soporific speakers, but always in control of their emotions.
Doers
Merz and Macron also share a taste for action. When Merz was asked to describe himself he said: “courageous.” That is unusual in a country where campaign slogans like “no experiments!” usually win elections.
Like Macron, Merz has a past in the business world, where “doers” are kings and risk aversion doesn’t make you rich. They both like to take gambles that sometimes don’t work at all, as when Macron dissolved parliament in June 2024 or Merz pushed for a vote on a resolution on migration with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) just before Germany’s February elections.
Both Macron and Merz surround themselves primarily with other men and aspire to a certain bourgeois aloofness. It is not only the taste for suits and ties, but this almost boundless self-confidence instilled from a privileged upbringing in a well-to-do family paired with a skewed self-narration of a life of personal meritocratic success. Hence, both are in their respective countries perceived as economic liberals.
François Ruffin, the harshest and most straightforward left-wing critic of Macron, put it this way in his book The Country You Don't Know addressed to the president: “I can’t stand your head. ... We are millions who feel this rejection within us, which is physical, visceral. It is a political fact. Why? Where does it come from? You breathe the fumes of a class. You carry within you a complacency that makes ordinary people, me, us, respect you, but at the same time forces us to revolt.”
Merz, whose popularity ratings are more than mediocre, also provokes that near-instant rejection and shares Macron’s reputation for being cocky, overly ambitious, and “all brains, no heart.”
Can They Pull It Off?
In the past, the historic Franco-German leader couples have worked precisely because the president and the chancellor were so different in their character and thinking, but driven by a common desire to advance together.
For the first time, France and Germany will soon have leaders whose overlap in thinking is striking—proud and impatient characters, both not immensely popular, with the right geopolitical instincts, a yearning for making great speeches, an affinity for risk-taking, a taste for action, and recurring execution problems. They have two years to chase their European dream and enter the history books like de Gaulle and Adenauer.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Paris columnist and author of Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president.
