Germany relaxes debt restrictions to allow more defense, infrastructure spending – state
The German parliament approved plans for large-scale spending on Tuesday, throwing decades of fiscal conservatism in a bid to restore economic growth and expand military spending in a new era of European collective defense.
The federal government has a huge boost to the approval of Conservative leader Friedrich Merz, trained the prime minister to treat hundreds of billions of euros to increase investment after two years of contraction in Europe's largest economy.
Germany and other European countries face a shift in U.S. policy under President Donald Trump, which European leaders feared could expose the mainland.
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Meers' conservatives and Social Democrats (SPDs) met after last month's election, hoping to create a 500 billion euro ($546 billion) fund for infrastructure and relax the rules of borrowing under the constitution to allow for higher security spending.
“For at least a decade, we have at least one wrong sense of security,” Melz told lawmakers before the vote.
“The defense preparations we are going to make today… are nothing more than the first step towards a new European Ministry of Defense,” he said.
The legislation still has to go to the German government's upper house of the 16 federal governments in Germany. When free Bavarian voters agreed to support the plan, the main obstacle to passage there seemed to fall on Monday.
The Conservatives and SPD hope to pass legislation through outgoing parliament, fearing that this could be restricted by the expansion and left-wing lawmakers that the next federal MP will be subject to in the next federal MP, which will begin on March 25. Meles has proven a close timeline with the rapidly changing geopolitical situation.
