BERLIN — There is a certain sound that reverberates through Berlin these days. It is not the sound of a protest or the clamor of a crisis meeting. It is the hushed whir of a country idling. The trains still run, mostly. The bakeries still open before dawn. The Bundestag still debates. But something beneath it all has gone quiet and the quiet is not peace. It is the sound of a machine that has been running too long without oil.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to office promising to change that. After the agonies of the Scholz years — the three-party coalition that specialized in wasting its members — Merz offered a grand coalition of his Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, a government that would finally move quickly, reform heavily and restore Germany’s confidence in itself. Less than two years later, it has the hollow sound of a slogan that outlived its moment. The coalition is not dead. It is simply dying in installments.
The first came in September 2026 when voters in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin went to the polls. Merz’s conservatives were not just defeated, they were wiped out in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, coming in under 5 percent. They lost in Berlin and bled in Saxony-Anhalt. The far-right Alternative for Germany won its third state election and now tops national polls at about 27 to 28 percent. A Forsa survey found that 55 percent of Germans want Merz to resign and in the east it rises to 68 percent.
You don’t need a focus group to understand why. Stand in a former industrial town in Saxony and listen. The complaints are not abstract, but rather about a pension that no longer stretches, a factory that moved to Poland or Texas or a heating bill that arrives like a threat.
The AfD has not won because suddenly all Germans love its leaders, but because it is the only party that sounds angry on behalf of people who feel left behind. The center sounds like a doctor explaining that the treatment will take time. The economy is the root of much of it. Germany is not in a dramatic recession but it is in something worse — a long, grinding stagnation.
Adjusted for inflation, GDP today is about the same as 2019. The industrial machine that powered Europe’s largest economy — the car plants, the chemical works, the machine-tool builders — has been battered by Chinese competition, high energy costs and the loss of cheap Russian gas.
The government’s response — a package of tax cuts and labor reforms unveiled in July 2026 — was about 0.21 percent of GDP. Business leaders said it was a start, but not enough.Privately, some executives are more blunt and one told reporters that companies are “demanding change or voting with their feet.”
Boehringer Ingelheim scrapped €900 million in planned German investments. Zalando announced it would close a logistics hub that will affect thousands of jobs. The message is not that Germany is a poor place to do business, but that it is no longer an obvious place to do business. That is a profound shift for a country whose identity was built on engineering, exports and the quiet certainty that its way of doing things was best.
The energy issue is at the heart of this malaise. Germany imports almost all its gas and oil and for years Russian pipelines fed its factories and heated its homes. The war in Ukraine ended that and in response Berlin diversified suppliers, phased out nuclear power and poured money into renewables. Renewables now generate more than half of Germany’s electricity, but electricity is only part of the story.
Oil and gas still power the furnaces and chemical plants and the government has switched from one set of suppliers to a smaller, more expensive set, and the bill is coming due with households and manufacturers alike.
The fight has spilled into Brussels. The European Commission wants to reduce electricity taxes relative to gas and get to 46 percent electrification by 2040. Germany objects, not to the goal but to the method and sees it as a power grab.
The Commission wants to push the change via electricity market rules that can pass by majority vote, rather than tax legislation that requires unanimity. Technically it is a skirmish, but beneath it is a fight over who gets to decide how Europe will pay for its energy transition and how much sovereignty Germany is willing to surrender.
Then there is security. The war in Ukraine has forced Germany to rethink its military posture and Berlin has sent weapons to Kyiv, deployed a permanent brigade to Lithuania and rewritten its constitutional debt rules to allow higher defense spending. In April 2026 it published its first national military strategy since the Second World War, pledging to build Europe’s strongest conventional army. For a country whose post-war identity was built on never again being the continent’s military problem, this is a revolution.
It is also an uncomfortable one. Some European officials worry that a rearmed Germany, even without the AfD, could eventually seek accommodation with Moscow to avoid conflict. The AfD, for its part, would like to leave the EU, lift sanctions on Russia and resume buying Russian gas. Its leaders have questioned the value of NATO. This combination of German money, discipline and a skeptical view of the West is exactly what keeps Poland and the Baltics up at night. “Germany is essential to European security,” said one Warsaw-based analyst, “but for Europe, it cannot become too big to manage.”
At home the coalition has begun to fray. The SPD — also a big loser in September — has begun to push back against Merz’s reform agenda and strategists in the party are talking of a “German New Deal” that does not leave people alone during transition. They object to changes in early retirement rules, particularly the idea of getting rid of the option of retiring on a full pension at 63 after 45 years of contributions. This measure is deeply unpopular in the east where many voters have fewer savings and long spells of post-reunification unemployment. Every time Merz talks of reform, his coalition partners hear the word “cuts” and every time the SPD talks of protection, Merz’s conservatives hear the word “stall.”
Merz himself has called the September defeats “a severe blow” whose repercussions will be felt for a long time. He promises to move the reform process forward, but also acknowledges that people are worried — about jobs, families, retirement and health care.
What makes Germany’s moment so difficult to handle is that there is no single lever to pull. The country cannot simply return to Russian gas. It cannot wish away Chinese competition. It cannot reform its way out of an aging workforce overnight. It cannot rearmed without spending money it also needs for pensions and infrastructure. And it cannot hold its political center together by telling voters that things will get better eventually, when the evidence of the last few years suggests it keeps getting further away. The AfD understands this — its rise reflects a deeper change in the post-war German model, as well as a failure of the establishment to articulate a convincing alternative.
For now, Merz’s allies insist that there is simply no alternative to him. “Changing chancellors is not the answer,” said one CDU foreign policy spokesman, “because whoever took over would face the same challenges.” That may be true, but it sounds suspiciously like a trap.
Germany is still Europe’s largest economy and most populous democracy. It is still, for now, the anchor of the European project. But anchors can drag and the country that once prided itself on stability is now a study in drift — not dramatic, but persistent. The question is not whether Merz can survive the next election, but whether Germany can find a story about itself that some of its people still believe.
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