BERLIN: New German Chancellor Friedrich Merzsaid Wednesday he will work to bring Europe and the US together in their approach to Ukraine, enable his country to build Europe’s strongest conventional army and make Europe’s biggest economy a “locomotive of growth” again.The conservative leader took office a week ago after winning election in February, ending a six-month period in which theEuropean Union‘s most populous member lacked a government with a parliamentary majority. He has already made a flurry of trips to EU allies and visited Kyiv with his French, Polish and British counterparts. “Europe expects something from us,” Merz said in his first policy speech to parliament, and promised that “we will offer our partners and friends reliability and predictability.” The new chancellor said that “the times in which Germany simply abstained on significant questions of European policy should be over,” an apparent reference to internal divisions that bedeviled predecessor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition before it collapsed in November. The new government brings together Merz’s center-right Union bloc with Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats. Merz emphasized his desire to keep the Trump administration on board with support for Ukraine, adding that he spoke with President Donald Trump twice recently and was grateful for his support for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. “Anyone who believes Russia would be content with a victory over Ukraine or parts of Ukraine, or the annexation of parts of the country, is wrong,” Merz said. He pointed to various Russian destabilization efforts and rejected the idea of a “dictated peace” or the “subjugation” of Ukraine. “We hope, and we all are working hard for this, that this clear position will not just be held everywhere in Europe but also by our American partners,” Merz said, adding: “It is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners.” Even before taking office, the new governing coalition pushed plans through parliament to enable higher defense spending by loosening strict rules on incurring debt, and to set up a huge infrastructure fund that’s aimed at boosting the stagnant economy. “The government will in the future provide all the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe,” Merz said. “Our friends and partners expect this of us; more than that, they are really demanding it of us.” The German military suffered from years of neglect before Scholz, shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, pledged to increase Germany’s defense spending to the current NATO target of 2% of gross domestic product and announced the creation of a 100 billion-euro special fund to modernize the military. Germany met that target thanks to the fund, but it will be used up in 2027. Merz said that “we will fulfill our commitments” in Germany’s interest and that of NATO, but didn’t address US demands for allies to raise their defense investments to 5% of GDP. Merz acknowledged that Germany’s security and influence in the world “stand and fall with our economic strength.” He pledged to roll back bureaucracy, advance digitization, provide tax breaks for companies and promote more EU trade agreements. “We will do everything to get Germany’s economy back on the course of growth,” he said. “We want to invest and reform … through our own efforts, we can once again become a locomotive of growth that the world looks at with admiration.”
