Can Germany’s new chancellor restore its leadership role in Europe?

When Germany’s parliament votes to make Friedrich Merz chancellor on Tuesday, he will face a task that is as simple to describe as it is hard to pull off: to restore his country’s leadership in Europe.

For this, the 69-year old conservative will have to achieve three central objectives, some of which could clash with one another: repair relations with neighbors and forge a rapport with President Trump; end a slow-burn immigration crisis that has poisoned European politics; and restart an economy that has become Europe’s growth laggard.

From his staffing choices to his travel schedule, Merz has telegraphed that foreign policy will be a key priority. He has put a loyalist in charge of the foreign ministry and set up the first ever National Security Council within the chancellery. The new government, he told journalists on Monday, “will make itself heard in Europe and in the world.”

“Merz is signaling that he wants to lead in Europe,” said Henning Hoff, an analyst and executive editor of Internationale Politik Quarterly, an English-language foreign policy magazine. “That’s a change from [his predecessor] Olaf Scholz,” who was more focused on domestic politics.

Merz’s Christian Democratic Union won the election in February and, within hours of taking office on Tuesday, he will be on his way to Paris for his first official visit. The trip is a well-established tradition for newly minted chancellors, but Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron are well-acquainted after meeting twice this year for extended talks.

The duo will be key to forging a common European line toward Trump on issues ranging from security to trade. Topics for discussion in Paris on Wednesday include a possible extension of the French nuclear umbrella to Germany, future European assistance to Ukraine and Europe’s response to Trump’s tariff threats, according to aides.

Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron after dining at France’s embassy in Berlin in March.

French and German interests aren’t entirely aligned, but analysts think Merz and Macron can strike mutually advantageous compromises. One possible quid pro quo, said Hoff, could see “part of the cost of extending the French nuclear umbrella to Germany…funded by joint European borrowing,” something Germany has always opposed.

German-U.S. relations have deteriorated rapidly since Trump’s election. Elon Musk called for German voters to back the far-right AfD in this year’s election, while Vice President JD Vance chastised Germany’s centrist parties for ostracizing the group.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in February, Merz bristled at Musk’s AfD endorsement. Hours after his election, he pledged to make Germany more independent of the U.S.

The mood plumbed a new low on Friday when Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said it had classified the AfD as a far-right extremist organization, a decision Secretary of State Marco Rubio described on X as “tyranny in disguise.”

Continued U.S. support for the AfD could make any U.S.-German rapprochement impossible. Yet aides to Merz, who has defended trans-Atlantic positions for most of his career, say he wants the U.S. to remain as engaged as possible in Europe even as he plans for what many experts see as the inevitability of America’s partial pullback.

After Paris, Merz will fly to Poland and he is expected to visit Ukraine in the next few days. One of Merz’s most closely watched foreign-policy decisions will be whether he delivers on his suggestion last month that he might supply Kyiv with Taurus long-range missiles, which Ukraine has long requested but Scholz never authorized.

A Taurus missile on display near Berlin last year.

The missile has the range and precision to destroy key Russian infrastructure behind the front-line that other weapons in Kyiv’s arsenal can’t reach. Its delivery may not alter the course of the war, but it could strengthen Kyiv’s hand and help bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, according to people familiar with Merz’s thinking.

One key Merz goal that may clash with his foreign-policy objectives is his pledge to crack down on immigration on day one. Merz’s designated chief of staff, Thorsten Frei, said last week the country’s border police would start turning back undocumented migrants including asylum seekers on day one of the government taking office. Merz told a television interview last month that he aimed to bring the number of asylum claims below 100,000 a year—less than half the 2024 level.

Germany, with its generous welfare state, has been a magnet for migrants and is by far the main European destination for asylum seekers. Stefan Marschall, professor of political science at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, said such a drop in arrivals could cap the rise in support for anti-immigration populists in the region.

Germany’s neighbors have reacted with alarm, however. Poland and Austria have complained that pushing back asylum seekers would breach European Union law while intensive border controls could harm trade and penalize commuters across the border.

Some countries that have served as transit points for migrants on their way to Germany fear being stuck with the newcomers if Berlin shuts the door. Merz’s allies counter that EU rules compelling refugees to claim asylum in their first port of entry into the bloc aren’t being enforced.

German police officers at a border crossing with Austria earlier this year.

Merz’s third immediate priority—fixing the economy—could take longer to pull off. Germany’s export-reliant economy has barely grown since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and most economists expect the economy to stagnate this year after two years of recession.

Merz’s designated coalition pushed a constitutional amendment through parliament just after the election that lifted all fiscal spending limits for defense expenditures and created a €500 billion, equivalent to $565.8 billion, infrastructure fund. Together, these measures could result in about $1 trillion in extra spending over the next decade—a massive boost for the economy.

Much of this is unlikely to be disbursed this year, however, and the spending will need to be accompanied by regulatory changes—expedited defense procurement rules and infrastructure planning procedures, for instance. Beyond a cut in electricity levies and network charges, there is little in the new government’s plans that could boost consumption in the short term.

“We’re not just dealing with a cyclical downturn but mainly with low investment levels that are structural in nature,” said Yannick Bury, a conservative lawmaker and trained economist. “And that’s why we’re particularly focused on structural measures to address this specific weakness.”

Germany’s embattled economy showed some green shoots at the start of the year, including slightly higher-than-expected growth in the first quarter and an uptick in business sentiment. Still, as long as the threat of Trump’s tariffs persist, Germany’s growth prospects will stay grim.

“Whether we can post positive growth this year won’t primarily depend on what fiscal measures we manage to implement,” said Bury. “It will depend mainly on what happens on the tariff front.”

Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com