Booing and jeers: DGB chief Fahimi: Merz's remark was cheeky
About a month ago, Chancellor Merz received jeers and booing during his appearance at the DGB congress. The head of the trade union association can understand the delegates' reaction.
23.06.2026, 04:00 Uhr
The chairwoman of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), Yasmin Fahimi, finds the jeers and booing against Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the DGB congress in May understandable. It was not clever of Merz to simply slam people with: "There will be less in the future, and that's a law of nature and you haven't understood mathematics," said the former SPD politician in the podcast "Ronzheimer". The Chancellor's statement was "honestly quite a cheeky remark, where you shouldn't be surprised if there is an occasional reaction from the audience."
Merz had campaigned for sweeping social reforms on May 12 in the first speech by a CDU chancellor at a DGB federal congress in eight years, and received jeers and booing from the ranks of the delegates. The upcoming pension reform in the summer he described as the "toughest nut" of the black-red coalition. "None of this is malice on my part or on the part of the federal government," he emphasized. "It's demographics and mathematics. It simply exceeds the capacity of two contributors to finance one person in retirement in the future."
Government spokesman Stefan Kornelius had described the negative reactions during Merz's (CDU) speech at the DGB congress as human, given the crisis-ridden situation in the country and the uncertainty of many people.
