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Politico (7 March 2025)

Nette Nöstlinger, Johanna Treeck and Chris Lunday

Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz is promising a constitutional revolution to allow Germany to become Europe’s unlikely big spender — on arms and infrastructure — to contend with a new world order in which America is no longer a dependable ally. 

To pull off such a sensational U-turn in the way the world’s third-biggest economy traditionally operates, however, he must secure a political consensus by an ultra-tight deadline: March 25, when a new configuration in the Bundestag will make reform difficult. 

It’s hard to exaggerate the scale of the change Berlin is targeting after U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of military support to Ukraine and his demand that Europe should step in and provide Kyiv with security guarantees against Russia.

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