Merz has been chancellor since May 2025. In January 2026 — eight months after he took office, at a point when widespread public disappointment had not yet set in — Hans Ley and I wrote an essay. The title: "The Supervisory Board in the Chancellery." The thesis: Merz is not an incapable person — he is a highly competent supervisory board member. He observes, evaluates, criticises. He does not get things running. That was the life he chose, the role he always played: judge, lawyer, lobbyist, supervisory board member. Nowhere operational. Nowhere responsible for results he himself had to deliver.
At that time, after eight months in office, this was not yet the majority view. Today, according to Forsa, 78 per cent of Germans are dissatisfied with his work. According to Morning Consult he is the most unpopular head of government among 24 democracies worldwide — ahead of Macron, ahead of Trump, ahead of Erdoğan.
What has changed? The facts have piled up. What has not changed? The question no one asks.
I. What has happened since — in his own words
One does not have to look at Merz through the eyes of his critics. One only has to listen to how he himself speaks.
January 2026, letter to the coalition: "Labour costs, energy costs, the burden of bureaucracy and also the tax burden are too high. We will have to work on this together." New Year's Eve: "2026 can become a moment of new departure." March, government question time in the Bundestag, on the proposal for a windfall tax: Finance Minister Klingbeil had proposed it, he had told him of his reservations and was now "curious to see the result."
Curious to see the result. The chancellor is curious to see what his finance minister decides.
Autumn 2025, a few months after taking office: Merz announces the "autumn of reforms". A great reform offensive, a new departure, a turning point for the economy. Autumn came. The reforms did not. What came: more letters, more announcements, more descriptions of the problem. In April 2026 BDI President Leibinger says he could repeat his criticism of the federal government "essentially unchanged". Nothing had improved compared with the previous year.
That is the language of the supervisory board. He observes. He communicates reservations. He is curious. He does not work — he waits for reports on other people's work.
II. The symptoms and their misdiagnosis
The former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, accuses the government of a "refusal to lead the state". BDI President Leibinger says nothing has improved compared with the previous year — he could repeat his criticism "essentially unchanged". Merz's own first head of office was replaced after a few weeks — quietly, without official explanation, "by mutual agreement."
The public reaction to all this: Merz is incapable. He is a failure. He should never have got the job. Personal criticism, personal scorn, personal calls for resignation.
That is the wrong diagnosis. And it is convenient — for everyone except Merz.
Whoever declares Merz personally incapable does not have to explain how a man who has come so far — lawyer, lobbyist, supervisory board member at BlackRock, parliamentary group leader, party leader — is suddenly supposed to be generally incapable. That is not true. He is competent. He is just competent for the wrong task.
And whoever tears Merz apart personally also does not have to ask: how did this system produce him? Why did he have no operational experience? Why does the normal path to the chancellorship not involve a single genuine operational step? Why do we choose people for the largest operational leadership post in the country according to criteria that have nothing to do with operational leadership?
III. The promotion of the observer
There is a mechanism we described in the January essay that has since been clearly confirmed: the supervisory board member gets promoted.
In business life, promotion from doer to observer is normal and often sensible. The best engineer becomes head of department. The best salesman becomes head of sales. Sometimes that works, sometimes not — the Peter Principle. But there are feedback mechanisms: figures, market shares, quarterly results. Whoever does not deliver loses the position.
In politics this mechanism does not exist — at least not promptly. Merz has four years. In four years a great deal of damage can be done before the feedback system "election" takes effect. And the criteria for advancement — rhetoric, network, party management — never measure what is needed in the Chancellery.
Merz is not an exceptional case. He is the systematic product of a system that selects observers for leadership roles. He does not rewrite the system — he is its result.
IV. What this means — beyond Merz
The point of the January essay was never Merz personally. It was: the political system has a selection problem. It produces critics instead of shapers, commentators instead of doers, supervisory boards instead of executive boards.
That will not improve when Merz goes. His successor will come from the same system. Friedrich Merz was party leader without ever having run a ministry. Whoever follows may have run a ministry — but running a ministry is not yet operational experience in the sense of: I have built something, been responsible for it, had to deliver.
The real question is not: when will Merz resign? The real question is: which structures would prevent the next chancellor from bringing the same competence gap with him?
There is no simple answer to this question. But it must be asked — instead of spending the energy on blaming a single man for a structural failure that produced him in the first place.
In the Chancellery, Merz does what he has done all his life: he observes. He evaluates. He is curious to see results. He never learned to do anything else — because the system never forced him to. That is his failure. But it is not his failing alone. It is the failing of every system that brings someone like him to a position for which he was never trained.
The original essay "The Supervisory Board in the Chancellery" was written in January 2026 by Hans Ley and Claude (Anthropic) — before the widespread public disillusionment. It can be read at: gu18.eu