Berlin: Merz rating falls to 16 percent, CDU in quiet debate on succession

The leadership of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union has been holding a private debate for several weeks on the early replacement of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The discussion was confirmed for the first time on Tuesday by the daily Bild and the magazine Focus, citing sources inside the party leadership.

At CDU headquarters it is cautiously described as a “strategic conversation about the stability of governance”. It opened with the arrival of new polling data. Merz’s approval has fallen from 39 percent in May 2025 to just 16 percent in May 2026, according to a comprehensive Forschungsgruppe Wahlen survey for ZDF.

For Serbia, which has concrete economic, energy and EU-accession interests in Berlin, any change at the head of the German government would mean a reset of diplomatic channels. Belgrade is currently negotiating with Berlin over a 580 million euro KfW credit line for railways and investments by Mercedes in Kragujevac.

President Aleksandar Vucic has met Merz twice in the past year, once in Berlin and once in Brussels, talks that produced a framework for accelerating Serbia’s accession negotiations. A change at the head of the government could slow that process by six to nine months, according to experts at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin.

The CDU leadership is weighing three scenarios:

• Merz is asked to step down voluntarily from the leadership of the party and the government, opening an intra-party contest for succession
• A no-confidence vote in the Bundestag, which coalition partner the Social Democrats has not yet signalled it would support, but which remains procedurally possible in a minority position
• Early parliamentary elections in February 2027 instead of September, frequently floated in the daily press but not officially confirmed

Three names floated as successors

The leading candidate inside the CDU is the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wust. His approval in his own state stays at 51 percent, and he has built a reputation over three years as a steady administrator. The second is the Minister-President of Hesse, Boris Rhein, who has a strong economic platform and close ties to the German industrial lobby. The third is the Minister-President of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, an East German voice who could move the party towards the centre in the eastern states, where the Alternative for Germany remains a challenge.

Bild reports on Wednesday that Merz’s problem is threefold. The first is the stalled health reform, the second a clash with the Bundesbank over the use of the Special Defence Fund, and the third his strained performance at press conferences, a regular subject of analysis in the Sunday papers. The drop in trust is especially marked among voters aged 18 to 34, where the party’s rating has fallen from 28 to 19 percent in a year.

Brussels cautious, Paris watching

Brussels has held a cautious tone through the Commission and the cabinet of President von der Leyen, herself a CDU member. The Commission said on Wednesday that “the stability of partners in Berlin is essential for the success of the European agenda”.

Paris, for which Berlin is the main European partner since the fall of Sebastien Lecornu’s government in January and the second return of the same government in February, is also withholding public comment. The French presidency has signalled that a change in Berlin would significantly affect the Franco-German engine ahead of key decisions on the EU budget for 2028 to 2034.

Belgrade is not commenting publicly on the CDU’s internal debate, but the Serbian embassy in Berlin is preparing contingency briefings for all three scenarios. If Wust takes over, the Serbian diplomatic team already has a file on his positions on the Western Balkans, drawn from his Bundesrat speeches in 2024 and 2025.

What do you expect from Berlin in the next thirty days, a formal leadership challenge or Merz gradually shoring up his position through fresh compromises with the SPD?