German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), appears to have prepared a constitutional amendment for a debt brake reform earlier than previously known. This is according to a report by POLITICO, citing a book by Robin Alexander, “Last Chance: The New Chancellor and the Battle for Democracy” which is set to be published on June 25 by the Siedler publishing house.
Just a week before the federal election, the CDU chairman asked former Federal Constitutional Court judge Udo di Fabio to explore the possibilities of amending the constitution with the votes of the old Bundestag after the election, Alexander writes. Di Fabio subsequently sent him a brief opinion.
The constitutional amendment, with the majority of the old Bundestag, was intended to open the debt brake for defense spending above one percent of the country’s GDP and enable a special fund of 500 billion euros for infrastructure, as the Union, Social Democratic Party and the Greens would not have had the necessary two-thirds majority in the new parliament.
The reason for Merz’s preparation of the constitutional amendment a week before the election was a speech by US Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference, Alexander claims. Vance’s speech was widely seen as a relativization of the American security guarantee for European allies and a personal conversation between Vance and Merz in Munich preceded the speech.