Before the state elections in Lower Saxony on Sunday, the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz accused Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) of leadership weakness. Merz said on Wednesday at an election campaign event in the Diepholz district that Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had been arguing publicly for weeks. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just a problem for these two, it is a problem for the Chancellor," said Merz. "You can't run a government like that." The CDU chairman said that as Chancellor he would not have allowed that.

At the event, Merz warned that a poor design of the energy price brake could lead to a legitimacy problem for the federal government and could also fall back on politics in general. "Then everyone will point the finger at us and say: They are not even able to solve a problem like this." At the end of September, the traffic light coalition announced a new "defense shield" of up to 200 billion euros to support consumers and companies because of rising energy prices. The opposition leader in the Bundestag offered the federal government his cooperation on the energy price brake. "I don't want any partisan arguments at this point," said Merz.

The SPD and CDU are currently governing in a grand coalition in Lower Saxony. A continuation of the alliance is considered unlikely. In the 2017 election, the SPD was the strongest party with 36.9 percent, followed by the CDU (33.6 percent), the Greens (8.7 percent), the FDP (7.5 percent) and the AfD (6.2 percent).