Friedrich Merz’s big Oval Office test

Hello from Berlin and welcome back to Europe Express Weekend. Since taking office as Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz has embarked on a whirlwind of international trips — earning the nickname of Außenkanzler, or foreign policy chancellor. Yet one destination has so far been conspicuously missing: the Oval Office.

Within about three weeks, the conservative leader has set the tone for his term: a more collaborative and assertive Germany is back on the global stage after the indecisive and bickering coalition of his predecessor Olaf Scholz.

Paris, Warsaw, Brussels, Kyiv, Tirana, Rome, Vilnius, Finland: Merz’s first destinations show that his priority is Europe’s security in the face of an existential threat — what he has described as a “militant, revisionist Russia”.

“He wants to make Germany a more robust, more ambitious player,” said Jan Techau, head of Germany at Eurasia. “His views of the world are more attuned to reality than under Olaf Scholz.”

The Kanzler who would like to be a president

Taking inspiration from the French system, where the president conducts foreign policy, Merz has eclipsed foreign minister Johann Wadephul, who for the first time in decades is from the chancellor’s party, not from a junior coalition partner. In Lithuania for the inauguration of Germany’s first permanent foreign brigade since the second world war, Merz also stole the limelight from Boris Pistorius, the popular Social Democratic defence minister.

One result has been renewed European momentum on Ukraine. Merz has engaged a reset with France’s Emmanuel Macron, ending a cold phase between the two capitals under Scholz. The chancellor has also sought a closer bond with Poland, a complicated but crucial neighbour, and the UK, whose Prime Minister Keir Starmer is seeking a comprehensive bilateral deal with Berlin. Merz patched things up with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who did not appreciate being excluded from the “coalition of the willing” trip to Kyiv that he took this month with Macron, Starmer and Donald Tusk, the Polish PM.

It is, as Ulrike Franke, Fellow at European Council on Foreign Relations, writes here, “the return of the big European powers.” On Ukraine, “France, Germany, the UK and, increasingly, Poland, are stepping up.”

Overcoming domestic hurdles

Merz has actively supported Brussels’ plan to prevent private US and Russian attempts to activate Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. In doing so, he shows he is willing to pay a political price at home, where some business leaders and Christian Democratic Union and Social Democrat politicians keep calling for a resumption of cheap gas supplies.

His coalition partner the SPD, whose members are wary of escalating tensions with Russia, has prevented him from making good on his promise to ship the coveted German Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv. But this week, hosting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin, Merz said Germany would fund and set up joint production lines for long-range weapons in the war-torn country.

Last week, he said Germany would raise defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, a request from US President Donald Trump ahead of the annual Nato summit in The Hague in June. This was greeted without much public outrage, says Eurasia’s Techau, when “not even two years ago, we were still debating 2 per cent”.

Merz this week also unexpectedly departed from a long-held stance on Israel. A staunch supporter of the Jewish state, he strongly criticised the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, saying they could “no longer be justified by a fight against Hamas terrorism”. The shift aligns with wider public opinion and has triggered a debate over whether to continue to supply weapons to Israel.

Merz is “willing to learn,” says Thorsten Benner, head of Global Public Policy Institute. “He revised his stance not because he was under pressure but because he realised that it was about time to go from a blank cheque to a much more critical stance” with the Netanyahu government.

How to wow Donald Trump

All these international forays could unravel if Merz fails his biggest foreign policy test across the Atlantic: his first meeting with Trump.

The encounter, which could happen next week or on the eve of the G7 in Canada mid-June, will be “the most decisive” for this chancellorship, says Techau. “If the two can’t develop chemistry, that would be a big downer for Merz, that would limit his diplomatic space.” The Ukraine war, Nato and Trump’s threat to impose 50 per cent blanket tariffs on EU goods are high on the agenda.

Merz is a transatlanticist in the tradition of German chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, but is also under no illusion: he knows Washington has become an unreliable ally and Europe must become less dependent on it for its security, Benner says. Still, “Merz has an opportunity to make Trump like him, allowing a more pragmatic relationship to emerge.”

What could Merz pull out of his hat to impress the unpredictable US leader? Macron invited Trump to the reopening of Notre-Dame and Starmer conjured up an invitation from the king.

Techau suggests “bringing a food truck with schnitzel and curry wurst to the White House with a lifetime supply of sausage”, or building “some German tech for the Qatari plane he’s just received”. “An amazing heritage trip” to Trump’s ancestral home, Kallstadt, in south-western Germany, says Benner.

Other ideas circulating in Berlin include a week in the Disney-like Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, while some suggest avoiding the Oval Office, where Zelenskyy and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa both suffered a fraught and humiliating face-off with its occupant. A game of golf? Merz knows “how to play well enough to avoid winning”, a politician noted.

“We don’t have a king or a Bastille Day parade, but we should give him pomp, a big thing,” Techau says. “We may think it’s silly but you have to think along those lines with Trump.”

More on this topic

My colleague Laura Pitel and I have interviewed Germany’s new economy minister, Katherina Reiche, who makes the case for safeguarding heavy industries in the face of mounting geopolitical tensions.

Anne-Sylvaine’s picks of the week