Merz CDU/CSU-SPD grand coalition 2025-present

Doctrine — stated goals and content

Return to ordoliberal Christian-democratic mainstream under a CDU leader explicitly positioned to Merkel's right on economic and migration policy, governing with an SPD junior partner that accepted a historic debt-brake relaxation as the price of coalition. The doctrine fuses supply-side corporate-tax reduction (Investitionsbooster Körperschaftsteuer cut path to 10% corporate + 15% solidarity-surcharge-inclusive by 2032), Bürgergeld tightening back toward stricter activation, migration-control prioritisation (permanent internal-border checks extended, accelerated deportation framework), and — simultaneously — a €500bn Sondervermögen Infrastruktur und Klimaneutralität (constitutional amendment passed by the outgoing Bundestag 18 March 2025 with Green support) plus an effectively unlimited defence-spending carve-out from the debt brake for Bundeswehr and NATO-eligible outlays above 1% of GDP. The governing arithmetic was forced by the AfD reaching 20.8% in the February 2025 election, which foreclosed a CDU-FDP or CDU-Green majority and made SPD the only available partner. Merz's signature doctrinal claim: that Germany's growth stagnation 2022-2024 is supply-side (energy, regulation, demography, capex deferral) rather than demand-side, requiring corporate relief, infrastructure catch-up, and labour-market re-tightening, and that the era of Schwarze Null was an investment mistake rather than a fiscal virtue. Coherence judgement: internally tensioned between supply-side tax-cutting and SPD-bargained transfer preservation, with credibility resting on whether the €500bn Sondervermögen reaches productive capex rather than current consumption — too early to evaluate (coded ~5 months into tenure).