GERMANY: Merz-Agreement Sends Message To Our Enemies 'Germany Is Back'

Wires carrying comments from conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz, his first public pronouncements since the confirmation of a deal with the environmentalist Greens that paves the way for a reform to the constitutional debt brake to boost defence spending and create an E500bln instrastructure fund. 

• Merz says that 'spending on civil protection, cybersecurity, intelligence, and aid to 'illegally attacked states' will be exempt from the debt brake beyond 1% of GDP as part of defence spending.
• Says that Germany's states 'will get to spend some E16bln extra through debt finance', and that the Climate and Transformation Fund will get E100bln from the infrastructure fund.
• Merz: 'This is a clear message to our enemies that we are ready to defend peace on our continent...Germany is back'.
• Says the plan 'will mobilise private capital; E500bln over 12 years is nowhere near what we need for our infrastructure'.
• Merz reaffirms, 'We will uphold the EU's financial stability pact.'
• Handelsblatt reports on the defence spending changes, "...the agreement [...] stipulates that defense spending under an expanded security definition will only be counted toward the debt brake up to one percent of [GDP]. This would currently be €43 to €44 billion. The regular defense budget is currently around €52 billion. This would effectively eliminate the credit limit on defense spending, as proposed in the financial package of the CDU/CSU and SPD. If Germany were to spend three percent of its GDP annually on defense, that would amount to well over 100 billion euros annually."