Germany’s front-runner Merz: Risk-taker who flirted with far right

He is the man tipped to be Germany’s next leader: an antidote to Europe’s crisis of confidence, say his supporters.

Friedrich Merz, 69, is a familiar face of his conservative party’s old guard.

Politically, he has never come across as exhilarating. And yet he promises to provide Germany with stronger leadership and tackle many of his country’s problems within four years.

His explosive bid to tighten migration rules with the support of far-right votes in parliament reveals a man willing to gamble by breaking a major taboo.

It also marks yet another clear break from his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party’s more centrist stance under his former party rival Angela Merkel.

Although Merz ultimately failed to change the law, he had launched a lightning bolt into an election campaign triggered by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government late last year.

Famously sidelined by Merkel before she became chancellor, he quit parliament entirely to pursue a lucrative series of corporate jobs and was written off as yesterday’s man.

But there is a sense of inevitability that this 69-year-old comeback kid might be on the cusp of clinching the job he has coveted for so long.