In early May, Conservative politician Friedrich Merz won a vote in the Bundestag to become Germany’s new chancellor, after falling short of the absolute majority in the first ballot. This was a significant blow to his prestige and an unprecedented failure in post-war German history. Having just rounded the first 100 days in office, how are Chancellor Merz and his “Grand Coalition” of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats faring?
Join us for a discussion with political scientist Hans Kundnani on how Chancellor Merz has navigated the challenges of governing amid global uncertainty, domestic pressures, and shifting alliances. We will also examine the government’s key policy initiatives – from economic reform and energy security to defense commitments and European cooperation.
Hans Kundnani is an Open Society Ideas Workshop Fellow and a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics. He was previously the Director of the Europe Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University, the New School, and Göttingen University. He has taught at Boston University, New York University and the Collège d’Europe.
Mr. Kundnani is the author of three books: Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (London: Hurst, 2023); The Paradox of German Power (London/New York: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014), which has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish; and Utopia or Auschwitz. Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (London/New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2009). He is a columnist for the New Statesman and also writes for other publications such as Dissent, the Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs and Internationale Politik. Mr. Kundnani studied German and philosophy at Oxford University and journalism at Columbia University in New York, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
