2025-05-06
9 分钟The Economist Hello, I'm Rosie Blore.
I host The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
Here's an article handpicked from the latest edition of The Economist.
When Friedrich Merz takes office as the 10th Chancellor of the German Republic on May 6th,
it will mark the culmination of a winding journey full of missteps and tumbles.
So often the nearly man of German politics,
the 69-year-old Mr. Merz has made no shortage of enemies over his long career,
none greater than himself.
The centrist coalition he has negotiated will begin its work amid economic and geopolitical tumult and will be led by a man whose own character makes his approach to the job difficult to predict.
Mr Metz's prosperous upbringing in the Sauerland,
a well-to-do rural Catholic region in Germany's West,
and his early career as a lawyer,
were not atypical for a future star of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union or CDU.
After a brief spell in the European Parliament,
which many associates say left a lasting mark on him,
in 1994 he entered the Bundestag and quickly made his name as an ambitious right-winger.
pushing flinty proposals such as steeping immigrants in German culture.
His assent, aided by a relationship with Wolfgang Schäuble,
a CDU grandee whom Mr Mertz has called the closest friend I ever had in politics,