Astrid Hamker, the president of the CDU’s Economic Council, has publicly urged Chancellor Friedrich Merz to exhibit significantly more leadership. Speaking to the magazine Focus, Hamker stated that she expects “much clearer leadership” from a federal chancellor and believes Merz needs to utilize his competency in setting basic policy guidelines.
Hamker criticized the internal political handling by the chancellery, noting that Merz must prevent the coalition’s internal conflicts from paralyzing the country. While she expressed confidence that the image could quickly improve once the promised reforms are finally implemented, she used strong language, recalling that just one year after the formation of the center-right coalition, she had assessed the government’s overall work as “deficient”. She pointed out that despite numerous promised reforms, very little had actually been achieved to date.
More specifically, Hamker criticized the chancellor’s domestic political efforts, rating his management of the coalition as barely “satisfactory”. She argued that Merz possesses a strong mandate but is failing to assert himself against the SPD, which she noted is merely the junior partner in this coalition. However, Hamker gave a “very good” assessment of Friedrich Merz’s foreign policy, asserting that Germany has successfully regained its status on the world stage-a feat she attributed directly to the chancellor.
