Germany, once a beacon of frugality, jolts Europe with planned spending splurge
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Few changes prompted by President Trump’s second term could be as consequential for Europe as Germany shedding fiscal prudence to turbocharge its military and retool its economy. In a hastily convened press conference in Berlin late Tuesday, Friedrich Merz, the man in line to become Germany’s next chancellor, announced a break with a position that had governed the country’s relations with its European partners for decades.
From now on, Germany’s famously strict fiscal rules, Merz said, would no longer apply to military spending, paving the way for a rapid acceleration in the country’s rearmament. The incoming government would also set up a €500 billion infrastructure investment fund to rebuild the country’s long-neglected transport, energy and digital infrastructure, he added. “Given the threats to our freedom and to peace on our continent, we must do whatever it takes for our continent," Merz said.
The country needed to rearm, he added, and to do so it needed to rebuild its economic muscle. Because of its scale and open-endedness, the splurge is a break with decades of fiscal orthodoxy. Informed by the hyperinflation of the 1920s that led to Adolf Hitler’s rise, the depression of the 1930s or the eurozone debt crisis of the 2010s, generations of German rulers have stressed the importance of sound public finances and economic stability, enshrining thriftiness into the national psyche.
Read on livemint.com