A bruised Merz wants to prove he’s a strong leader in first foreign trip as chancellor

BERLIN — Friedrich Merz wanted his first full day as German chancellor to exhibit his strong leadership within Europe in difficult times. Instead, he finds himself hobbling out of the starting gate.

On Wednesday Merz plans to visit his counterparts in Warsaw and Paris in an effort to rejuvenate an informal alliance called the Weimar Triangle, which the new chancellor sees as a potential engine for shaping a more robust European defense strategy.

But Merz’s initial failure to win enough votes to secure the chancellorship on Tuesday exposed his relative political weakness at home as the far right ascends, spoiling his attempts to show that “Germany is back,” as he recently put it.   

Merz’s immediate goal is to begin preparing a unified European position ahead of a critical NATO summit in June at which the Europeans will want to show their American counterparts that they’re serious about defense commitments, according to Evelyn Gaiser, a NATO and security advisor at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is affiliated with Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The NATO summit will be “decisive for the future of transatlantic defense architecture — and therefore for Europe’s security,” said Gaiser. “A coordinated European position and a clear signal of increased defense efforts must be prepared now.”

Merz, who campaigned on a platform of reinvigorating Germany’s leadership role in Europe, sees Poland — projected to be NATO’s biggest defense spender, and France — whose president, Emmanuel Macron, has long pushed for European strategic autonomy — as key partners.

But as Merz seeks to project stability and European unity amid the threats posed by Russia and growing doubts about Washington’s commitment to defending its NATO partners, his political weakness at home may undermine those efforts.

After falling short in Tuesday’s first Bundestag vote for the chancellery and scraping through by a thin majority in a second ballot, doubts are growing in foreign capitals about Germany’s ability to act as an anchor of European stability.

“The failure of this ballot is a kind of thunderbolt,” said Valérie Hayer, chair of the liberal Renew Europe group in the European Parliament and a close ally of Macron.

Italian MEP Nicola Procaccini, a confidant of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, echoed that sentiment.

“Germany was once considered a pillar of stability,” he told ANSA. “That is no longer the case.”

Roderich Kiesewetter, a lawmaker in Merz’s CDU, argued that Germany must make real military commitments in order to gain the confidence of many of its allies.

“What’s needed now is a credible German contribution to Europe’s deterrence posture [against Russia],” Kiesewetter told POLITICO. Merz, he added, “must meet [Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk] with a tangible and credible military and personnel commitment.”

Topping the agenda, however, will be forging a common European approach to U.S. President Donald Trump, especially given his unpredictability.

 “They’re probably thinking in scenarios,” Dominik Tolksdorf, a transatlantic expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said of Merz’s talks with his European counterparts. “The worst thing that could happen is that the NATO summit evolves into a similar confrontation as Trump’s meeting in the White House with Zelenskyy. Of course, the Europeans want to avoid that by all means.”

That leaves Merz with a delicate assignment on Wednesday: projecting that he’s up to the task of leading Europe in deeply uncertain times, while attempting to restore his political strength at home.

Nette Nöstlinger and Oliver Noyan contributed reporting.