Election campaign: Merz sees scope for more military spending

Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz insists in the federal budget for the financing of clear additional expenditure for defense. “We have to reorganize priorities now,” said the CDU boss in the ARD “interview of the week.” “In the end, of course, the question can also be asked in the room whether we have to correct the debt brake.” For him there is a ranking of the topics that you have to talk about. “And we have a lot of scope in the federal budget that we can still use.”

Merz emphasized: “I am not ready to talk about higher taxes, higher debts and higher government spending.” For example, there are now 50 billion euros in expenses from the budget. “We have to correct on the output side, and then you can also talk about the revenue side. But please in the order.”

For the Russian War against Ukraine and the new course of US President Donald Trump, Merz said that it is now important to have a very quick understanding of the Europeans on a common strategy. “To ask and beging that we finally get to the negotiating table, that’s not the right approach,” he said with a view to discussions between the United States and Russia. “We now have to develop our own weight, for example in the question of how we strengthen NATO so that an attack of this Russian war of aggression does not take place in NATO.”

Merz criticized Trump’s statements, who had practically blamed the Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Selenskyj for the lasting of the war. “Basically, this is a classic perpetrator-victim reversal. That is the Russian narrative.” This is how President Vladimir Putin has been presenting it for years. “To be honest, I am somewhat shocked that Donald Trump has obviously adopted himself.”