Friedrich Merz suffered a rude shock on the morning of May 6, 2025 as he prepared to lose the German Chancellor's championship in the "In-Cultivation" qualifier.

After weeks of negotiations, after February’s federal election, the Christian Democrats of Meers (CDU) had a collaborative deal with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), with Bullock (SPD) taking the majority of 13 seats in the 630-member Bundestag, the House of Commons in Germany. However, Melz still struggles to approve his prime ministerial status.

He didn't have the majority he needed in the first vote, and his 18 members of the league voted against him.

Despite his second vote, the initial "no" vote was unprecedented for an upcoming prime minister of the post-war Federal Republic, with insiders claiming that some votes "no" opposed to Merz's conservatives pushing for relaxation of German fiscal rules. Apart from the immediate political embarrassment, voting is a symptom of other things: the new prime minister and his government are deeper in weaknesses. As a scholar of German politics and history and the author of the forthcoming book on German national traditions and economic governance, I think that Meers’ problems and their national problems have deep historical roots.

Take off the brakes?

For Germany and Europe, the voting bet is to approve Melz's bet, as the prime minister cannot be higher - both face a crisis. As SPD's parliamentary leader Jens Spahn pointed out in the May 6 vote: "The whole of Europe, perhaps the whole world, is watching this vote."

The German Chancellor hopes to strengthen Europe and Germany through strong leadership and heavier spending. He promised to build "Europe's most powerful traditional army" to deal with the threat of Russia's good-spirited Russia and the United States' traditional security commitment to the African continent.

However, this broad vision faces many obstacles, and most importantly, the so-called “debt brake.” After the 2008 financial crisis, this "brake" limited the annual deficit to a paltry 0.35% GDP and completely banned any debts in Germany's "Länder" or region.

In March, shortly after the February general election, ahead of the seat of the new federal government, New Bundestag, Merz, then-conqueror, called for debt exemptions, spending more than 1% of the annual GDP, and promised to "will do whatever you want to do" to strengthen Germany's military and verbalism, and promised to spend $1.12 (1.12 trillirion (1) trillirion (10 billion). The outgoing parliament agreed to create a $560 billion (500 billion euro) fund dedicated to fixing Germany's collapsed infrastructure.

But Merz's plan to revitalize German military and infrastructure could be severely damaged by domestic forces inside and outside his alliance. It violates long-standing German norms and ideologies that have the potential to hinder the capacity of the state and the ability of the government to act decisively.

Contradictions about state power

This swing starts with the new government returning to an ancient and deeply rooted division about the characteristics of the German state after World War II.

In the late 1960s, West German Prime Minister Willy Brandt quipped that the Federal Republic had become an "economic giant but political dwarf."

Although this sentence will become a cliché, it captures both the legacy of World War II and Germany’s ambivalent attitude toward state power.

Until the 1980s, such restrictions posed relatively few problems. The country's post-war "economic miracle" legalized the fledgling democracies while giving capital and labor to the export sector that promotes prosperity. This effectively translates political power into economic strategy players.

These institutional characteristics also reflect the unique post-war pattern of German politics, thus weakening centralized power. West Germany sovereignty was achieved by Prime Minister Konrad Adenauer in the late 1940s and was decentralized domestically by federal and decentralized political institutions: through the internationalization of NATO and European economic communities.

In the famous statement by political scientist Peter Katzenstein, this "semi-declaration state" helped to gain German moral credibility from the ashes of fascism and genocide. Through a strong state of checks and balances, a decentralized state is seen as a bastion of opposition to authoritarianism and a secret to growth and political stability in export leadership.

Even after the restoration of all sovereignty of German unification in 1990, German officials still drove lightly. They fear that a more confident Germany would evoke ancient fears of German militarism. Furthermore, they are content to take economic power rather than military power privileges as coins in their special areas.

Swabian Housewife Country?

Historical ambivalence about the role of Germany's state and the dilemma related to German power is not easy for Meers to resolve.

Regarding Germany's decisive leadership, the past three years have shown that there is still much work to be done. Faced with an unprecedented series of shocks - from Russian military aggression to Ukraine's energy crisis, these crises have exposed Germany's dependence on imported Russian gases, to the far-right alternative fürdeutschland (AFD) - Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Melz-Mel

But instead, Scholz's (yellow) liberals, Greens and (red) Social Democrats' "traffic light coalition" jitters and quarrels, eventually succumbing to a rare - in German politics - public parties, which eventually lowered the government in late 2024.

Reluctant to send its state-of-the-art weapons, especially cruise missiles from long-range Taurus, to Ukraine, nor to overcome the liberal hostility to much-needed fiscal expansion, Scholz has been criticized for his opposition to the captives of German voters and captive Germans and the debts of highly regarded Germans.

Merz hopes not to repeat the same error. But to achieve his vision of revitalizing Germany, safer, he had to overcome the debt brakes and, more importantly, to induce its deep ideological trend.

These factors reinforce long-term restrictions on defense spending, which failed to keep up with inflation for most of the 2000s and are well below 2% of NATO's annual GDP.

From the SPD Prime Minister Gerhardschröder's "Red and Green" alliance from 1998 to 2005 to the Christian Democratic Merkel government from 2005 to 2021, the left and right governments were then accepted by the left and right governments from 2005 to 2021. resistance.

But for many observers, the seductive austerity has led to decades of domestic infrastructure investments – from roads, schools to public buildings, to broader public services – the wider failures that AFD has been eager to exploit. Nevertheless, Melz's commitment appears to be $560 billion (€500 billion) roughly equal to the country's existing demand without considering future depreciation.

Even German traditionally punctual train service has become a laugh, and now, jokes about German comics late or canceling trains.

Beyond rhetoric

It is unclear whether the constitutional changes that Meers’ modifications and allowed but did not create stronger defense spending add new directions to new directions in German politics, or whether Europe’s largest economies will continue to be affected by self-implementation constraints and parliamentary quarrels. If the latter occurs, Germany's risks continue to decline and the risk of strengthening AFD, which comes from the former Eastern region, which is economically stagnant and surpasses Merz's CDU in public opinion polls last month.

Despite Merz's commitment, there is no budget guaranteed a single euro for military and infrastructure funds. Even so, yawning needs in other areas will not be met, such as state-funded R&D and education.

Europe also needs Meles' words to turn action into action - soon. Russia's threat to the East and a shift in relations with Trump's U.S.-Western poses the EU in trouble and requires strong leadership.