Merz’s fresh start quickly falls apart

BERLIN — In normal times, Germany’s parliamentary summer recess is when top politicians get to exhale, and journalists are left to forage for so-called Sommerloch stories: summer-fillers about runaway animals and mysterious predators whose menace tends to fade on closer inspection. 

No such luck in 2026. Chancellor Friedrich Merz might wish the growing threat to his leadership were an overblown summer tale. But in Berlin, the beast is real enough. 

Discontent in Merz’s party — the conservative Christian Democratic Union — has been mounting for two weeks now, as controversy over a senior figure’s decision to become a parent through surrogacy has spiraled into the gravest crisis of his chancellorship. 

No one is yet saying out loud that Merz should go. But if his party performs poorly in three state elections in September, the crisis will likely become much harder to contain.

The drama has so far unfolded in two acts. The first began on July 14, when BILD — which, like POLITICO, is owned by Axel Springer — reported that Jens Spahn, the conservatives’ parliamentary group leader, and his husband had become parents through a surrogate mother in the United States. 

“This feeling can hardly be put into words,” the paper quoted him as saying. The complication was plain enough: Surrogacy is banned in Germany, and the CDU has long opposed it, as had Spahn. 

Merz’s standing has deteriorated since he took office in May 2025, with his support among voters falling as the far-right Alternative for Germany has surged to the top of the polls. The surrogacy controversy intensified the unease within the CDU. 

The second act of the crisis was meant, in Merz’s telling, to be a liberation and a fresh start. Spahn, a long-standing rival whom Merz had always eyed warily, was made to resign, and a broader shake-up was supposed to quickly follow — only for things to fly off the rails.

On Thursday, Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder learned that he was to be dismissed and immediately told his staff by text message. But the man Merz had lined up to replace him was not yet convinced to take the job and withdrew. 

The chancellor left the uncertainty unaddressed, and by Sunday, Schnieder felt forced to act himself, ending the “undignified situation” by asking to be dismissed. 

Schnieder was not alone in his frustration. Tino Sorge, an outgoing Health Ministry state secretary, also complained publicly. 

“I take note of the chancellor’s decision,” he said. “That he announced it first in party bodies and before the press, rather than in a personal conversation with me, remains his own question of style.” A government spokesperson replied that Sorge had been informed by the incoming health minister. 

Sorge’s willingness to publicly rebuke Merz points to the chancellor’s crumbling authority. 

“I have never experienced such a mood in the CDU,” said Thorsten Alsleben, managing director of the business-aligned lobby group Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft and a well-connected figure in the party. 

For Merz to regain credibility, Alsleben added, he would have to push through reforms aimed at ending “the longest period of economic weakness” since World War II.

For now, Germany’s conservative politicians are holding back in public, at least until this fall’s elections: in Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6, then in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two weeks later. 

In private, however, talking about replacing the chancellor is no longer taboo. 

One lawmaker who had once backed Merz and was granted anonymity to speak freely said the question was no longer whether the chancellor would be replaced — but when and how. 

The next scene in the current act is set for Wednesday, when CDU lawmakers are due to elect Spahn’s successor at a special caucus meeting that many expect to be tense. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is also expected to appoint three new ministers, though they are unlikely to take their parliamentary oaths until lawmakers return from the summer recess in September.

After the fall elections, the next act of the drama will begin.