Conservative leader Friedrich Merz is scheduled to be sworn in as Germany’s new chancellor on Tuesday, taking office at a pivotal moment marked by the country’s deepest post-war economic slump, strained ties with key ally the United States, and a rising far-right movement.
A combative orator and millionaire hobby pilot, the trained lawyer has a strong business background, including with US asset manager BlackRock, but has never before held a government leadership post, reports AFP.
A man in a hurry at age 69, Merz has pledged to reboot his country's ailing economy, strengthen the threadbare armed forces and curb irregular immigration -- all with the aim of building a "Germany we can be proud of again".
After two decades of more centrist rule in Germany under his party rival Angela Merkel and then the Social Democrats, Merz has vowed a governing style that returns to the old-school conservative roots of his Christian Democrats (CDU).
Merz has argued that this is the only way to combat the dizzying rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which took second place in the February general election and is now topping some national polls.
In other signals of a rightward shift, Merz has vowed to impose a "zero tolerance" law-and-order drive, to limit "woke" policies and gender-sensitive language and to study a return to nuclear power, which was phased out under Merkel.
Determined to hit the ground running, Merz secured major financial firepower weeks before taking office, when the outgoing parliament approved hundreds of billions in funding for the military and to rebuild creaking infrastructure.
"The world out there isn't waiting for us," he has warned after half a year of political paralysis in Berlin since the coalition of outgoing SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz imploded on November 6, the day Trump was re-elected.
Rival to Merkel
On the European stage, Merz has pledged to rebuild Berlin's central role, in close partnership with Paris and Warsaw, as the European Union confronts what he has termed a new era during which Trump has thrown into doubt decades-old certainties.
He has been a staunch defender of aid to Ukraine to help repel Russia's invasion, at a time when the US administration has initiated a rapprochement with Moscow.
Merz's inauguration fulfils his life's ambition to become chancellor, which Merkel foiled decades ago when she beat him in an internal power battle and went on to rule the country for 16 years.
Merz took a break from politics and went into the business world, serving on multiple corporate boards including that of the German arm of BlackRock.
Biographer Sara Sievert wrote that during that time Merz often railed against Merkel in private.
"For almost a decade, Merz gave the impression that he wasn't finished with politics and wanted to return," she wrote. "Some in the CDU believe Merz was just waiting for Merkel to leave."
As he has staged his political comeback, Merz has openly attacked many of Merkel's policies, especially her welcome a decade ago to millions of war refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
During the election campaign, Merz focussed heavily on new curbs on immigration, a push he redoubled after several fatal attacks in which the suspects arrested were foreign-born.
In a political gamble, he pushed a non-binding motion demanding an immigration crackdown through parliament -- with the support of the AfD, a move widely condemned as breaking a long-standing taboo against co-operating with the far right.
Scholz sought to portray his rival Merz as impulsive and a "hothead". He charged that Merz's dalliance with the AfD signalled he was willing to co-operate further with the extremist party -- a charge Merz strongly rejects.
'Captain of industry'
Merz, who is Catholic, was born on November 11, 1955, and lives among the hills and forests of the Sauerland region of North Rhine-Westphalia state.
At six foot six (198 centimetres) tall, Merz stands out in a crowd. He is a licenced pilot who sometimes flies his own private jet.
He has been married for more than 40 years to Charlotte Merz, a judge, with whom he has three adult children.
"Merz is a classic bourgeois conservative," wrote Sievert, describing a politician who values good manners, punctuality, sharp suits and a tidy office.
He was elected to the European Parliament in 1989 and soon after to the Bundestag, where his mentor was the late CDU powerbroker Wolfgang Schaeuble.
A free-market liberal who wants to slash red tape to help Germany Inc, he outlined his views in a 2008 book titled "Dare More Capitalism".
Merz has sought to turn his long stint in the business world into a key selling point, said political scientist Antonios Souris of Berlin's Free University.
"He likes to flirt a little with this role of having returned to politics as an outsider, as an experienced captain of industry, not just a career politician like Scholz," he said.
Bd-pratidin English/ Afia
