German Chancellor Friedrich Merz not only broke his election promise that he would not incur any new debts, but was actively working on how to implement such a plan during the election campaign, a new report has now revealed.
In March, Merz’s centre-right alliance, together with the social democrats and the Greens, pushed through a bill to ease strict borrowing rules to be able to take on a massive €1 trillion in additional debt—something Merz had promised not to do during the campaign leading up to the elections in February.
As right-wing media outlet Nius.de puts it, “it was the biggest political breach of promise in recent decades.”
To add insult to injury, it has turned out that Merz was already working during the campaign on a plan to bypass the newly elected parliament to get the bill approved. This was revealed by Robin Alexander, the deputy editor-in-chief of daily Die Welt.
Merz had apparently made his decision following a speech by new U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Munich, in which Vance criticised the European elites for censoring free speech.
The speech and a personal conversation with Vance are said to have motivated Merz to consider taking on a huge debt for military spending, as he started to doubt whether the U.S. would remain a strong ally of Europe.
However, on the evening after Vance’s speech, Merz continued to state in public that he was not intent on incurring new debt, but was prioritising cutting state spending.
