OPINION: Merz really needs to talk Germany up or he'll hand the country to extremists

As the old saying usually attributed to Ludwig Erhard goes: Wirtschaft ist zu 50 prozent Psychologie  (“Economics is 50% psychology”).

Not only does Chancellor Friedrich Merz regularly namecheck his revered predecessor and chief architect of the post-war ‘Economic Miracle’: he is also a member of the Ludwig Erhard memorial charity, which talked up his arrival in office as a renaissance of Erhard’s political approach.

Merz himself, too, spoke repeatedly last year about trying to trigger a Stimmungswechsel – a change in the national mood – towards more optimism. This, he argued, would get companies investing and people buying again. The only thing he stopped short of was actually using the famous 50 percent phrase.

So it’s puzzling, to say the least, that Friedrich Merz in power seems bent on making Germany's already morose mood worse, swapping his pre-election visions of national renewal for an unflattering portrait of a sclerotic country which has lost its work ethic and deserves to be punished.

We’re all skivers, apparently

The recent debate about ending the legal entitlement to work part-time is a case in point.

Having already gone on record about how “we won’t be able to maintain prosperity with four-day weeks and work-life-balance” and that he would like to abolish limits on maximum working hours, Merz has now allowed his party’s business policy group to demand that the right to reduce hours be abolished and criticise Germans for preferring “lifestyle part-time hours” to a good, honest week’s work.

On the surface, this might seem to fit with anecdotal evidence. For example, have you ever tried ringing your local authority or the tax office on a Friday?

But there are two things wrong with this debate. Firstly, the figures show that the drop in the number of hours worked in 2024 as against 2023 was minimal – and, far more importantly, both hours worked and the number of people in work in Germany are higher now than at any other time in recent history.

So the reason you can’t get hold of anyone on the phone may rather be that they’re overworked and on ‘do not disturb’ – or caring for their children or elderly relatives. Or volunteering. Or recovering from a serious illness.

And, actually, so what if they are enjoying a bit of ‘lifestyle’ time off? For some that means going out for the afternoon and putting some much-needed money into the service sector which accounts for 60 percent of our GDP.

Which takes us on to the second point: accusing people going about their everyday lives of laziness is not exactly going to contribute to a positive swing in the national mood that gets everyone spending and investing again.

We call in sick (yes, call!)

Then there’s Merz’ repeated attempts to get rid of sick-notes by telephone and complaints that Germans are off sick too long.

It’s fair to point out that getting written off by phone has long been a bone of contention – so much so that the option, originally introduced as a Covid emergency measure, was already axed once in 2023 (and then brought back in a few months later).

It’s also fair to acknowledge that Germans do, in comparison to neighbouring countries, spend a little too much time at the doctor’s office – even when differences in how sick-leave is recorded are taken into account. Culturally, there potentially is an over-cautious approach to illness.

READ ALSO: Your views - 'You can't be fired for taking too many sick days in Germany'

Yet Merz’ distaste is audibly that of the schoolmaster who suspects pupils of wilfully playing ill.

Once again, this has neither a basis in fact, nor is it conducive to a positive national mood. Instead, it enrages those who are off work, getting sicker as they wait ever longer for an appointment with the specialist and fosters suspicion between colleagues.

In fact, it might even lead to people pulling a sickie because they believe everyone else is at it and that they’re getting the raw end of the deal. In psychology, this is called ‘perceived injustice’.

We don’t even deserve dental treatment

Merz certainly perceives some injustices in Germany’s dental system.

In fact, it seems to be something of a hobbyhorse for him: back in opposition, he accused asylum seekers of clogging up dental surgeries; now, it’s Germans themselves who are frivolously having treatment to their teeth. And so last week, his policy buddies came up with a fantastic new idea: make these lazy skivers pay the full costs of dentistry themselves!

READ ALSO: What does public health insurance really cover at the dentist in Germany?

It’s sad, because we’ve been here before.

Fifteen years ago, we had a problem in Germany with people avoiding dentists due to a small quarterly fee; scrapping it led to people going more often. Which is, in public health terms, an unquestionably good thing.

And, once again, in economic terms, too. Because if people get concerned that they’ll have to put money aside to pay for fillings, they’ll spend less…

Bad for Germany, good for extremists

Even at the best of times, the average German leans towards pessimism, towards assuming the worst. And these are the worst of times. So never have we been more in need of confidence than now.

I’m not talking about baseless boosterism or starry-eyed optimism, but about plotting a realistic path along which we can keep our high standard of living and make sure that everyone in Germany benefits.

Yet having promised precisely that, the people in power over us now seem to mistrust us. Rather than acknowledging the fact that there are more retirement-aged workers still putting in shifts in Germany than in any other EU country, they’re branding us lazy.

Rather than reminding us that we have overtaken Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy, and that, with industry order-books starting to fill up again, our decline is not inevitable, Merz and his policymakers are preparing us for pauperisation and Polyfilla amateur dentistry.

If he takes his hero Erhard at his word, then Merz should be trying, where legitimate, to find positives -- and not only by taking pot shots at other countries.

He needs to be quick about it too: we have two of four state (Landtag) elections approaching in March, and our negative national mood is a tonic for extremists, who prey on people’s fears for the future.

Here’s another quotation for Merz – albeit from former AfD spokesperson Christian Lüth: "Je Schlechter es Deutschland geht, desto besser für die AfD." (“The worse Germany is doing, the better it is for the AfD.”)

All things considered – Trump’s tariffs, Putin’s wars, general global chaos – Germany is actually doing quite well. Merz needs to celebrate our successes and show us how we can build on them. He needs to talk us up, not down.