Germany’s chancellor-elect has launched a strong critique against the United States administration under Donald Trump, just hours after securing victory in Sunday’s federal election.
“After [President] Donald Trump’s remarks last week … it is clear that this government does not care much about the fate of Europe,” said Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), during a televised discussion on election night. He called for German “independence” from the US.
On February 18, Trump referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “modestly successful comedian” who had become “a dictator without elections” and had “done a terrible job.”
This marked a dramatic shift from the close relationship Zelenskyy had enjoyed with Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. Zelenskyy offered to resign on Sunday if Ukraine gained immediate NATO membership.
A week earlier, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stunned European leaders by urging them to “provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine” and to take the lead in defending their continent from Russia by increasing defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from the current 2 percent.
It is uncertain “whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form” at the next NATO summit in June, Merz said, “or whether we will have to establish a European defense capability much more quickly.”
At a news conference on Monday, Merz told reporters, “it is five minutes to midnight for Europe” on defense.
His bold rhetoric contrasts with the weak mandate voters gave him. The CDU’s 28.6 percent share of Sunday’s vote is its lowest margin of victory since the party’s founding in 1949.
Merz believes the US is ‘throwing Ukraine to the wolves’
Merz is in accelerated talks to form a centrist “grand coalition” with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was ousted from power.
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