// LEADERS' VIEWS
FRIEDRICH MERZ, CHANCELLOR, GERMANY
A new era has already begun. Russia’s war of aggression drastic expression so far … China, with strategic foresight, has worked its way into the ranks of the great powers. The United States’ global pole posi- tion is being challenged. And Washington reacts by radically reshaping its foreign and security policy … Our power today rests on three pillars: our security, our competitiveness, and our unity. against Ukraine has been the most First, we must invest massively in our ability to defend ourselves. And we are doing this. Second, we must rapidly make our economies competitive. And we are doing this. Third, we must stand closer together, among Europeans and among like-minded partners. We are doing this … Germany has to regain economic strength … We want to make Europe a key player again – in global politics, economi- cally and particularly in defence … We must continue supporting Ukraine in its fight for a just peace. We must become capable of defending ourselves on our own in Europe. We want to reduce dependencies that currently make us vul- nerable. And … we want to ensure that our economy can tap into its full potential for innovation and growth. This will only work if we work together as ONE European Union. And … Germany pledges to take a special responsibility here. That is why we decided right at the start of my tenure to increase Germany’s defence spending up to five percent of GDP [gross domestic product] … There is no room for isolationism and pro- tectionism in this agenda. Instead, we
Security, competitiveness and unity define Germany’s strategic reset
tariffs. Tariffs again have to be replaced by rules, and those rules need to be respected by trading partners. On this, the EU is making great progress … At the heart of our efforts lies digi- tal transformation. Artificial intelligence requires industrial scale. Germany has one of the world’s largest pools of indus- trial data. That is just one reason why we are investing in high performance AI gigafactories, speeding up the expansion of data centres and creating the digital infrastructure for a competitive AI econ- omy in Germany. World Economic Forum, 22 January 2026 Russia’s gross domestic product cur- rently stands at around two trillion euro. The European Union’s GDP is almost ten times higher than that. And yet Europe today is not ten times stronger than Russia … We are strengthening NATO’s [North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s] eastern flank, with our brigade in Lithuania … the first time in the history of the Bundeswehr that an entire large formation will be based outside our own territory. We will ensure greater security in the High North … We are laying the groundwork for new laws to make our grids and critical infra-
Atlantic, we need to come to the conclu- sion that we are stronger together. We Europeans know the enormous value of the trust on which NATO is based. In an era of great powers, the US will also need this trust … We are building on a strong network of global partnerships … Canada, Japan, Turkey, India, Brazil, as well as South Africa, the Gulf states and other countries will play a key role here … Munich Security Conference, 13 February 2026 We recognize the seriousness of climate change, and Germany is determined to make a strong contribution to addressing it. Our commitment to the Paris Agree- ment and to our climate goals is firm. Innovation and technology are at the heart of our approach. Effective and forward‑looking climate policy depends on integrating climate, economic, energy, and innovation policy. Wher- ever we succeed in this, climate policy becomes, at the same time, a policy for global security and prosperity … In these days of ongoing crisis in the Middle East, we must expect the geopolit- ical – and therefore also the geoeconomic situation – to remain turbulent for the foreseeable future … Another central element of Euro- pean and German climate policy remains carbon pricing … Germans make up roughly one per- cent of the global population, yet we are responsible for around two percent of global CO 2 [carbon dioxide] emissions. Our goal is to contribute our fair share to the solution … We will continue to be an important donor for public climate finance. With the Just Energy Transition Partnerships and other business and energy cooperation formats we are already supporting the energy transition in many countries … When multilateral processes move slowly, concrete alliances of the willing can take us a long way. Petersberg Climate Dialogue, 22 April 2026
structure more resistant against hybrid attacks. We are forging resil- ient supply chains and reducing unilateral dependencies on raw materials, key products and technologies … We adhere to climate agreements and the World Health Organiza- tion because we firmly believe that we will only be able to tackle global tasks by work- ing together … On both sides of the
are talking about stra- tegically coordinated ties worldwide … We want to strengthen the rules for fair trade and a level- playing field. Europe must be the antithe- sis to state-sponsored, unfair trade practices, raw-material- protectionism, tech pro- hibition and arbitrary
13 globalgovernancemedia.org
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