Friedrich Merz

Friedrich Merz is presiding over the most consequential week of his chancellorship on security. On July 9 he announced Germany will purchase and station US Tomahawk cruise missiles and Typhon launchers on German soil, finalized at the NATO Ankara summit, calling it closing "an important strategic gap." He paired the announcement with a blunt framing: NATO remains an alliance, but Germany cannot outsource its security. The deployment is a bridge toward independent European strike capabilities he wants built over time.

At Ankara, Merz helped secure over $50 billion in defense-industrial agreements backing a 3.5 percent-of-GDP spending target by 2035, including a deal for Germany to produce ATACMS via Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall. He launched negotiations for a Canada-Germany Strategic Partnership Agreement with PM Mark Carney covering security, defense, technology, energy, and space, with foreign ministers tasked to finalize by year's end. In a trilateral with Carney and Norway's PM Støre, he celebrated Canada's selection of German TKMS for a 12-submarine fleet as "a strong signal for our transatlantic and European partnership."

Merz stated that diplomatic means for resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict have been exhausted, positioning European NATO members as the primary drivers of the alliance's confrontation with Russia as US priorities shift. The US is accelerating its military withdrawal from Europe, cutting 5,000 troops from Germany and halving deep-strike capabilities on a six-to-twelve-month timeline, which forced allies to present a gap-bridging strategy at Ankara. Merz is in open rift with Trump over Iran, saying "the Americans clearly have no strategy," while pursuing a dual-track approach of criticizing US policy and courting Trump with flattery.

Domestically, Merz unveiled a 34-point economic reform package on July 2 with CDU and SPD, including 10 billion euros in annual income tax relief funded by a 47 percent top rate over 280,000 euros, pension overhaul, stricter sick leave rules, and bureaucracy cuts. He opened Infineon's 5-billion-euro Smart Power Fab in Dresden the same day, framing it as securing Europe's technological sovereignty. He demands a 400-billion-euro cut to the EU's proposed 2-trillion-euro 2028-2034 budget, warning "as it stands, an agreement is impossible." With the AfD leading national polls at roughly 29 percent, Merz has firmly ruled out cooperation and vowed to block the party from power. He is also pressing forward on comprehensive pension reform with Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, targeting parliamentary action in the second half of 2026.