Merz’s view of the EU is not that different from elements of the Trumpian diagnosis of a continent adrift: too much dithering, too much immigration, too much regulation and too much focus on soft power in a dangerous new world.
Merz’s EU policy is increasingly informed by a sense that Europe, with Germany at its center, will have to reinvent itself if it wants to survive in this hostile world. When Merz talks about Europe these days, he barely mentions the EU, in contrast with his predecessors, Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz.
The chancellor has sharpened his tone versus Brussels, whose machinery looks like a relic of a bygone era. Instead, Merz is now pushing a new vision of Europe that seems be no longer grounded in established EU institutions, but rather bound together by a common cultural heritage.
“We only have a chance of surviving these changing times if we rediscover the strengths of our European model,” Merz said in a Feb. 18 campaign speech in Rhineland-Palatinate, where state a election will be held Sunday. “This European model is not the invention of a European bureaucracy. Rather, this European model is deeply rooted in our continental European history. It has something to do with Christianity.”