Friedrich Merz

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    The Guardian view on Ursula von der Leyen’s first 100 days: the steepest of learning curves | Editorial

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    In a press conference on Sunday to mark 100 days since the beginning of her second term as European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen erred on the side of understatement when asked whether she still considered the US to be an ally. The answer was yes, she replied, before adding that “we have our discussion points without question”.Hard to argue with that. Regarding the war in Ukraine, international trade and existential questions concerning the future of European defence and security, the geopolitical landscape bears no resemblance to the one that Ms von der Leyen looked out upon on 1 December. As Mr Trump and his “America first” outriders have confounded cherished assumptions about the transatlantic alliance, they have also sought to encourage authoritarian nationalism in EU member states.In France and Germany, the fabled engine of European integration, this has been uncomfortably akin to knocking at an open door. In Paris, days after Ms von der Leyen reassumed office, Michel Barnier’s shortlived government collapsed when Marine Le Pen pulled the rug from under it. In Germany, well before Elon Musk and JD Vance championed its cause, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party had reached historically high levels of support that would see it finish comfortably second in February’s snap German election.As Ms von der Leyen put it on Sunday: “Our European values, democracy, freedom, the rule of law are under threat.” The response, from Brussels and in national capitals, needs to be both robust and more expeditious than is often the case in the labyrinthine world of EU policymaking. Happily, the initial signs are positive.The move last week by EU leaders to disapply the bloc’s fiscal rules to military spending, potentially freeing up £670bn, is a significant step towards achieving greater strategic autonomy from Washington. It followed the unveiling of extraordinarily radical proposals in the same week by Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz. Bypassing a constitutional restriction on state borrowing, these are designed to facilitate not only far greater spending on defence, but also on the modernisation of a stagnating economy.After decades in which EU economic policy has been skewed by Berlin’s traditional debt aversion – shared with other “frugal” member states such as the Netherlands and Denmark – this is a very different direction of travel. As Europe exits an era defined by an uncritical commitment to free trade and dependency on the US security umbrella, it is also the right one. Recognising the desire of many member states to formalise common borrowing arrangements introduced following Covid, Ms von der Leyen said “nothing is off the table” in relation to defence. But, as the Draghi report argued last autumn, the same kind of fiscal firepower is required to meet the challenge of the green transition and compete with the US and China for the jobs and future industries of the 21st century.Last month in Brussels, a different kind of centenary was marked when a bust of a former commission president, Jacques Delors, was unveiled. Born in 1925, Mr Delors became the preeminent champion of a “social” vision, in which common EU institutions would deploy pooled resources in order to build a Europe where solidarity and growth were intertwined. That perspective faded from view following the neoliberal turn in the 1980s. As Ms von der Leyen navigates the rest of her five-year term, its time has come again.

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      The US embrace of Russia is an existential threat to the EU. Germany must step up to save it | Catherine De Vries

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      In February 1945, three world leaders – Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Josef Stalin – met in Crimea for the Yalta conference, to discuss the new world order they would implement after the soon-to-end second world war.Smaller nations were given no say in deciding their fate. The Soviet sphere of influence would infest eastern Europe for decades and US foreign policy dominated the second half of the 20th century. Churchill resisted the end of the UK’s global empire and independence for Britain’s colonies came piecemeal; they were let go with bitterness.Eighty years on, the logic present at Yalta – that large states can impose their will on smaller states – is back. Might is once again right. But history is repeating itself with a striking difference – for this time, there is no European leader at the table. Russian and US delegations have sat down to discuss Ukraine’s future without Ukraine or the EU’s input. Eighty years down the line, Europe is no longer seen as relevant by the great powers.The urgency of Europe’s shifting geopolitical landscape was laid bare last Sunday in London, where European leaders gathered with their counterparts from the UK, Canada, Turkey, the EU and Nato for a high-level defence summit. That meeting came as a result of the very public collapse of White House talks between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump, and Trump’s suspension of military aid to Ukraine.Even if a reported reconciliation between Washington and Kyiv materialises, European officials are still reeling from the rapidity of the transatlantic rupture so early in Trump’s second term. Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, last month warned Europe it could no longer rely on US security guarantees. JD Vance, the US vice-president, went further at the Munich Security Conference, calling Europe – not Russia or China – the primary US threat.Pax Americana – the postwar period of relative peace in the western hemisphere, with the US as the dominant economic, cultural and military world power – is over. Europe will quickly have to adapt to the new reality, with the loss of its primary strategic and military partner. What part now will the EU’s largest member state, Germany, play?Despite large gains by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which doubled its support in the federal election on 23 February, Germany will be led by Friedrich Merz, head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The chancellor-in-waiting lost no time in declaring that Europe, faced with an increasingly adversarial US, must take its fate into its own hands.“It is my absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can actually become independent from the US step by step,” Merz said, hours after his election victory. Stark words from a politician who as recently as a few months ago was a bona fide Atlanticist.Merz wants to forge greater unity in Europe and establish an independent European defence capability. It remains to be seen how he will go about achieving this, but he clearly aims to put Germany back into the European driving seat.German leadership has been lacking in recent years. While Paris and Warsaw took increasingly assertive positions on European security, Berlin has remained cautious. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, spoke of a Zeitenwende – a turning point in German policy to reflect the new realities of the world. But, in the end, little but hot air was produced.Since the end of the second world war, Germany has invested relatively little in military capacity. Under the Nato umbrella, and with the close partnership with the US, this was not seen as a problem. But the world has fundamentally shifted, and Merz sees that Germany, finally, must change, too.However, an emboldened new Germany, at the head of the EU, faces a harsh world and an even harsher set of realities. The country will not only have to increase its military capacity, bring about bloc-wide military cooperation and perhaps even station troops in Ukraine, but it will also have to pay for all of this.This will require overhauling Germany’s strict ceiling on public borrowing, the so-called Schuldenbremse (debt brake) enshrined in the constitution. Merz has now begun that process; on Tuesday, his party struck agreement with its prospective coalition partners, the SPD, on the creation of a special €500bn (£390bn) fund to boost defence and infrastructure spending that would be exempt from the debt constraint. If approved by the German parliament, this would amount to a dramatic and some critics warn risky loosening of the budgetary straitjacket.Merz will also have to rally the EU (though Trump’s harrying of Europe and Zelenskyy is already pushing European leaders toward his vision), as well as face down Trump-friendly far-right parties, many of them in ascendence across the bloc.At a recent meeting in Madrid of the rightwing radical bloc of the European parliament, the Patriots for Europe, Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV in the Netherlands, praised Trump as a “brother in arms”. Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, expressed his support for Trump’s pro-Russian policy at the rightwing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last month. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel has said that “Trump is implementing the policies that the AfD has been demanding for years”.These rightist politicians seem willing to risk Europe’s security and prosperity for political gain. The US turn toward Russia and away from democracy will be an existential test for the European project and Europe’s commitment to law and democracy. The art of European cooperation has long been to achieve the possible in unforeseen circumstances. Germany, under chancellor-elect Merz, has a steep learning curve ahead. But the task of stepping up to save Ukraine – and Europe – falls to Berlin.

      Catherine De Vries is professor of political science at Bocconi University in Milan More

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      Friedrich Merz was the most pro-US politician in Germany – his shift could be historic for Europe | Jörg Lau for Europe |

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      It is hard to overstate the importance of Friedrich Merz’s urgent message to the nation after his win in the German elections. This, after all, is the beginning of a new, dangerous era in European security. It would be his “absolute priority”, Merz said, immediately after victory for the CDU/CSU was confirmed, to create unity in Europe as quickly as possible, “so that, step by step, we can achieve independence from the US”. He added: “I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television programme.”Indeed. For the leader of the conservative CDU, a lifelong believer in the transatlantic security alliance, this is a significant reversal. And it is highly personal for Merz: there is hardly a more pro-American politician in Germany than the man who worked for the investment company BlackRock and was the long-serving chairman of the influential lobbying group Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge).That makes the unfavourable things the chancellor-elect had to say about the US government all the more remarkable. The interference from Washington in the German election campaign had been “no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow”, Merz said, referring to Elon Musk’s ever more frenzied support for the far-right AfD, and to the polemics of the US vice-president, JD Vance, against the CDU’s “firewall” policy, which excludes cooperating with the Putin-friendly party.Germany was under “massive pressure from two sides”, and Donald Trump’s government was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”, Merz said, warning that it was unclear whether, by the Nato summit in June, “we will still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.The unusual frankness of his remarks reflects a deep frustration that has built up in traditionally pro-US conservative circles in Germany, particularly over interference led by Musk and Vance. Their coordinated campaign sought to undercut the centre-right Christian Democrats in favour of the far right in the run-up to the vote. Musk posted a barrage of tweets on his X platform, including some on election day. He has also tweeted his support for one of the most extreme proponents of the AfD, Björn Höcke – a man twice convicted for using Nazi slogans.Even more intrusive were Vance’s repeated statements linking the CDU’s firewall policy, which keeps the AfD out of power, with the US security guarantee for Europe. The vice-president’s menacing message to Germany was: if you continue to exclude the far right from power, the US cannot do much for you.It was heartening to hear the chancellor-elect refute this unprecedented meddling in Germany’s affairs. He must know that the vindictive Trump administration will most likely want to make him regret his choice of words.There is an irony here in that Merz had tried his own brand of Trumpism just weeks ago, when he reacted to a string of violent attacks in Germany with the announcement of a tough migration policy that he would enact “on day one” of his chancellorship. He put pressure on the centre-left parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens. If they refused to support him, he would have no choice but to accept the votes of the far right for his proposals. To the shock of many, Merz’s non-binding motion (which included controversial measures such as pushing back all asylum seekers at the border) was passed with the votes of the AfD.That left Merz with a mixed message for the rest of the campaign: he promised radical change but continued to vow non-cooperation with his far-right competition. Mainstream voters who wanted a more restrictive migration policy, but not with the help of the extreme right, were left with doubts: how trustworthy was Merz? Would he do it again? The conservatives’ underwhelming result in the election is testimony to his miscalculation.To make matters worse, Merz had opened himself to AfD goading that he lacked the stamina to follow through and form a rightwing majority coalition. Our hand remains outstretched, the AfD co-leader, Alice Weidel, has repeated maliciously since election day, but if you keep shutting us out, we will crush you next time.Expect to hear this tune a lot in the coming weeks. Merz’s gambit backfired. His only option now is coalition talks with the diminished Social Democrats. If both parties manage to form a government, it can hardly be called a “grand coalition” any more. The two “people’s parties” barely add up to a majority in parliament.Yet there is an opportunity that arises from these pressures. The Social Democrats may find it easier to compromise on migration policy when in coalition with the conservatives. The next government urgently needs to exert more control on the border to counter the far-right narrative.Merz’s blunt assessment of an emerging post-transatlantic order opens a long overdue debate in Germany. It is, indeed, a head-spinning moment for the country’s strategic defence community, a reversal of core beliefs that have guided Germany for the past 80 years.It was the CDU that tied Germany irreversibly to the western alliance. This was a major historical achievement, because it was not at all popular at the time, especially among German conservatives who had habitually been anti-US. Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, risked all the political capital he had when he steered a fiercely anti-western and pacifist Germany towards rearmament and Nato membership in 1955. What’s more, he rejected the alternative path suggested by the French president, Charles de Gaulle, to opt for a European defence community.Trump has now turned Germany’s conviction on its head. All German governments from Adenauer onwards, irrespective of left or right leanings, had argued against the French project of “European strategic autonomy” for fear that it would weaken Nato. A security partnership with the US was the indispensable guarantee of peace on the continent, the thinking went. But now the US government is calling Nato into question, thereby making a more independent Europe a necessity.The consequences are not confined to the continent. Merz wants to explore closer security cooperation with London, and he already has his eye on the UK’s nuclear arsenal, as well as France’s. What a turnaround: Germany, once proud of phasing out nuclear energy, is shopping for a new nuclear umbrella.Ironically, these worrying turns might help Merz succeed in forming a coalition with the Social Democrats. Reforming the strict fiscal regime known as the Schuldenbremse, or “debt brake”, has always been a source of friction between them. No more. The rigid limit on borrowing, enshrined in the German constitution, must go. Everybody knows this: there is no way to replace US security protection while upholding a balanced budget.Changing the constitutional debt brake requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag, which leads to the final irony: Merz will have to make a deal with the parties on the left to win their support for loosening spending. More borrowing for defence, but also for infrastructure investments. Only a conservative could do this, like only Richard Nixon could go to China.There is quite a measure of poetic justice in this development. Merz has gone from flirting with Trumpism to easing Germany’s austerity policies in just a matter of weeks.

      Jörg Lau is an international correspondent for the German weekly Die Zeit More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s realignment: the geopolitical plates are moving. Brace for further shocks | Editorial

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      The rumblings prompted by Donald Trump’s re-election soon gathered force. First came tariffs and threats of territorial annexation; then the greater shocks of JD Vance’s Valentine’s Day massacre of European values and Mr Trump’s enthusiastic amplification of Kremlin lines on Ukraine.On Monday came another seismic moment. For more than a decade, the UN security council has been largely paralysed by the split between the five permanent members – Russia and China on one side; the US, France and Britain on the other. This time, when the US brought a resolution calling for an end to the war in Ukraine on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it did not criticise Moscow, demand its withdrawal or back Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The result was that China and Russia backed the resolution – while the UK and France, having failed to temper it, abstained.Earlier, even Beijing had chosen to abstain rather than reject a UN general assembly resolution condemning Moscow as the aggressor in Ukraine. It was passed overwhelmingly, with the backing of 93 states. Yet the US joined Russia in voting against it – along with Belarus, North Korea, Syria and a handful of others. “These are not our friends,” the Republican senator John Curtis wrote on X.The post-1945 order is beyond repair while Mr Trump occupies the White House. Emmanuel Macron’s charm and deftness papered over the problems somewhat when he became the first European leader to meet the US president since his re-election. (Sir Keir Starmer, not noted for his nimbleness or charisma, is likely to find the task somewhat harder this week.) The French president was adroit in flattering Mr Trump even as he told the truth. But it is not surprising that he failed to make any real progress in closing the gap. These are not cracks in the transatlantic relationship, but a chasm.A committed Atlanticist such as Friedrich Merz, on course to shortly become the German chancellor, is compelled to urge independence from the US because “the Americans, at any case the Americans in this administration, do not care much about the fate of Europe”. He warned that European leaders might not be able to talk about Nato in its current form by June. The problem is not only what Mr Trump may do but what he may not. Nato is built on the conviction that countries will stand by the commitments they make. That confidence cannot exist while Mr Trump is president.When Sir Keir told MPs on Tuesday that “Here we are, in a world where everything has changed”, he was commenting on Russian aggression, but everyone understood the real shift underlying his remarks. To note, as he did, that the US-British alliance has survived countless external challenges was not quite a vote of confidence. It tacitly acknowledged that the threat this time is internal.The ground is rocking beneath Europe’s feet. It must brace itself for further shocks. In place of the post-second world war order, Mr Trump envisages a world where alliances are no more than empty words and great powers bluff and bully their way through. Bilateral meetings have their purpose – they may offer minimal respite and buy a little time – but it will require common will to defend the interests of European states. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, suggested that European leaders would be meeting in London at the weekend to discuss security. Their best hope of standing firm is by standing together.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More