Merz: 'Germany will have the strongest conventional army in Europe'

With Alternative für Deutschland's breath always on his neck in the polls, Friedrich Merz returned to the Bundestag on 14 May for his first speech as chancellor. The leader of the Cdu-Csu tried to go beyond the shuddering investiture of 6 May, when, having failed the first count, he needed a second attempt to gain confidence. Things never seen in post-war Germany.

Merz must erase the shadow of the false start and promised a turnaround to revive the tired German economy and to make the army 'the most powerful conventional armed force in Europe'. The Bundeswehr will have 'all the financial resources it needs', the chancellor assured. He secured the main card back in March when, abjuring his faith in budgetary rigour, he proposed and obtained the reform of the debt ceiling, which exempts all defence spending exceeding 1% of GDP (a threshold of around EUR 43 billion) from the constitutional constraint. A dowry that at this point only finds a limit in EU rules, loosened precisely to allow member states to invest more.

According to anticipations, the defence budget will exceed 60 billion this year, up from 52 billion in 2024. In order to increase the number of military personnel (at least 100,000 more are needed), however, there will be no return to compulsory conscription, which was suspended in 2011 by Angela Merkel. Instead, a new voluntary military service will be established.

Merz went over the points of the coalition contract signed with the Social Democrats. His was above all a very calm speech. The vehemence as leader of the opposition is behind him and the chancellor has already been burnt by the uncertain majority that supports him: the 'small' black-red coalition has 328 seats, a narrow margin compared to the threshold of 316. Consensus for the measures will have to be built with careful preparatory work if further slips are to be avoided. The first objective remains to avoid offering the Germans the indigestible spectacle of a quarrelsome majority, like that of the coalition between the SPD, Greens and Liberals, which collapsed before its time. An intention already declared in the title of the government pact: 'Responsibility for Germany'.

The measure of the new caution lies in the praise heaped on the Spd's partners and in the tones he used on immigration, a field on which, before the elections, Merz had moved far to the right, almost chasing Afd, with whom he had even attempted a collaboration in Parliament, challenging the totem of the cordon sanitaire against the ultra-right. It was precisely from the leader of Afd, Alice Weidel, that the conservative Merz heard the 'accusation' he probably never thought he would receive in life, that of being 'a chancellor of the left'.