The Election Nobody Expected to Be This Close
When Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU crossed the finish line on February 23, 2025, with roughly 28.5 percent of the vote, the media narrative immediately shifted to “strong mandate.” That framing deserves scrutiny. Yes, this was the party’s best showing in over a decade. Yes, Merz earned his shot at chancellorship. But here’s what matters more: nearly 72 percent of German voters rejected his party. That’s the real story that got buried under headline writers celebrating a conservative rebound.
What made this election genuinely fascinating wasn’t the CDU/CSU victory. It was what happened to everyone else. The AfD captured roughly 20.8 percent of votes, a historic high that sent genuine shivers through European capitals. This wasn’t fringe politics anymore. This was a bloc that actually competed for second place and won it, reshaping every conversation about coalition mathematics before a single government was formed. When a country’s second-largest vote-getter is a party most established politicians refuse to work with, you’re operating in entirely new political territory.
The Coalition That Had to Happen
Let me be direct: Merz didn’t want to govern with the SPD. He never campaigned for that scenario. His preferred partner would have been the Greens, a coalition that would have signaled a kind of forward-thinking centrism. But the Greens underperformed, and the arithmetic forced him into the Social Democrats’ arms. The formal confirmation of their coalition in April 2025, delivering a 328-seat Bundestag majority, wasn’t a love match. It was necessity dressed up in diplomatic language.
This matters because coalition governments in parliamentary systems reveal truth through their constraints. Merz could push his preferred policies only as far as his SPD partners would tolerate. On economic policy, that meant real compromise. On social issues, it meant moving slower than his base wanted. This is how democracy actually works, not as winner-takes-all, but as constant negotiation. If you’ve ever watched city council meetings where the majority party still has to trade favors to get things done, you understand the texture of what happened here.
The Constitutional Earthquake: Suspending the Debt Brake
Here’s where the first 100 days got genuinely consequential. In March 2025, Merz’s government executed a move that would have seemed politically suicidal just years earlier: suspending Germany’s constitutional debt brake to fund a €500 billion infrastructure and defense package. For context, that debt brake, the Schuldenbremse, isn’t just policy. It’s constitutional theology in Germany, treated with the reverence Americans reserve for the Second Amendment. Breaking it required a two-thirds supermajority vote.
The case for doing this was straightforward. Europe’s industrial capacity needed modernization. NATO allies were demanding Germany pull its weight defensively. The infrastructure needed investment. But the intellectual backlash from conservative economists was fierce and deserved serious engagement. They argued that suspending constitutional guardrails, even for reasonable purposes, sets precedents that outlast any particular government. Once you’re comfortable breaking your fiscal constitution, what stops the next government from doing it for less defensible reasons? This isn’t fearmongering. This is how institutional decay typically begins, with reasonable exceptions that become the rule.
You can view this move two ways, and I think both views hold water. First reading: Merz showed genuine leadership by prioritizing European security over domestic political comfort, making hard choices that transcended partisan advantage. Second reading: Merz abandoned fiscal conservatism, the intellectual core of his coalition’s identity, and opened a door he can’t close. The truth probably sits in the tension between these readings. The €500 billion package wasn’t frivolous. But the manner of its passage did matter, regardless of its merits. Merz government’s €500 billion spending package — Deutsche Welle documented the legislative path that reflected both genuine consensus and genuine strain.
What Germany’s Defense Transformation Signals to Europe
The Bundeswehr’s budget is now on track to reach 3 percent of Germany’s GDP by 2027, exceeding NATO’s 2 percent benchmark. This is a real shift. Germany’s post-1945 strategic identity centered on economic integration, not military expansion. That identity wasn’t a choice made lightly, it emerged from genuine moral reckoning. Watching that identity change under pressure from Russia’s actions and American diplomatic pressure says something profound about how geopolitics can reshape even the most deeply held national commitments.
Merz’s willingness to accelerate this shift reveals his actual political priority: positioning Germany as a serious military power within Europe. Whether you think this is wise or reckless depends partly on your assessment of Russian intentions and partly on your philosophy about how democracies should organize their security. But notice what this means concretely: German soldiers will operate in more places, with more equipment, backed by larger budgets. That reshapes European military capacity in measurable ways.
What This Means for Democracy Watchers Like Us
So what do Merz’s first 100 days actually tell us about European politics in 2025? I’d argue three things. First, centrist parties can still win, but they win smaller than before. The CDU/CSU’s 28.5 percent would have been considered disappointingly narrow a generation ago. Second, far-right parties have achieved electoral legitimacy in the west’s largest economy. That’s a threshold we’ve crossed. Third, governing coalitions now require real trade-offs, and clear mandates are becoming rarer.
The fascinating part, if you pay attention to how these systems actually work, is that constraints aren’t always weaknesses. Merz couldn’t simply impose his vision. He had to negotiate. That friction produced compromises, some defensible and some questionable. That’s democracy operating as designed, messy, difficult, but fundamentally pluralistic.
What’s your read on this? If you’ve been following German politics closely, I’m genuinely curious whether you see Merz’s approach as wise recalibration or worrying precedent-setting. Have you watched how your own local government handles coalition dynamics or fiscal constraints? The same patterns play out everywhere, just at different scales. Germany’s 2025 election results — Federal Returning Officer provides the raw data. What conclusions do you draw from it?