He must have liked the headlines. It is said here that he was once again a step faster than the chancellor, he, the shadow chancellor, is exploiting the weaknesses of the federal government, it is said there.
Of course, one can argue about what Friedrich Merz achieved on his trip to Warsaw, let alone was able to achieve at all. Certainly, the CDU boss has succeeded in attracting attention.
Poland had expressed a need to speak, was verbose about the sluggish Panzer ring exchange with Germany - and Merz sought a clarifying conversation. At least that's the impression.
The leader of the opposition travels to the upset neighbor to smooth things over, as the "Spiegel" "reportedly" learned before the visit. However, one can assume that the professional opponent of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and his traffic light government probably had more than one attempt at mediation in mind.
His trip to Kyiv was already officially marked by the "political responsibility of the opposition and the government," which Merz wanted to express with his visit, as his chief of staff announced at the time. Merz was probably also concerned with demonstrating determination and drive - which Scholz lacked from the point of view of his critics, not least the opposition and Kiev.
The CDU leader forestalled the chancellor with his trip to the crisis area, who was perceived as a procrastinator and hesitant in view of the creeping deliveries of war equipment and changing reasons for his missing visit.
A statement after the trip finally suggested that Merz was obviously concerned with more than just the matter, that the trip could also have been an attempt to raise his profile: "I am very grateful to President Selenskyj for accepting my request for an invitation from the Federal President ", wrote Merz on Twitter, the way for a personal meeting of the Federal President and the Federal Chancellor with President Selenskyj is now clear. Thanks to Merz, of course, who wants to have mediated decisively in the matter.
Now, during his two-day visit to Warsaw - with a final detour to Lithuania - there were also several sub-messages. Once again, Merz traveled to the (diplomatic) crisis area, again accepting the criticism on the spot, while the chancellor was on vacation and parliament was on the summer break. One takes care of that. But Merz was also noticeably careful to put his own role into perspective so as not to give the impression that he wanted to torpedo government policy.
He would neither pursue secondary foreign policy nor act as a mediator between the governments, he assured on Deutschlandfunk on Friday morning. He is the representative of the Federal Republic of Germany and as such gets an idea of the situation. The trip had been planned for weeks and had nothing to do with the current tensions.
Although Merz showed understanding for the "disappointment" in Poland and warned that Germany should play a more prominent foreign policy role overall, the opposition leader also found defensive words for the federal government. For example, he does not share the impression of the Polish Deputy Foreign Minister that Germany is practicing a "deceptive maneuver" when exchanging rings (read more about this here), which he also said during his talks in Warsaw. "I tried to refute them (the allegations, editor's note), but I couldn't refute them across the board," Merz reported on Thursday in an interview with Phoenix.
After all, Merz only has limited influence on government action, for example with regard to arms deliveries, even though he plays an important role in the Bundestag as leader of the opposition. As a result, he could not present himself as a more committed quasi-chancellor: he would have raised expectations that he cannot meet. In return, Merz was able to sharpen his profile as an opposition leader, sensible in his dealings and objective in his criticism, who bends over the situation on the spot before criticizing it in the Bundestag.
That makes an impression, at least in Poland: "He spoke a different language than Angela Merkel or the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, in the middle of the most compromising situation in German politics since 1945, thinks his country should take responsibility for Europe," commented the pro-government Warsaw resident Newspaper "Gazeta Polska" the visit. "The saying 'headless like Germany' would probably be remembered for this. It looks as if Merz could change this picture if Scholz loses power."
Friedrich Merz should have liked that too.
