Germany’s prospective new government struggles to win support for defense, infrastructure plans

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BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s Greens, whose support is needed for the prospective next government’s plans to loosen debt rules for defense spending and draw up a huge infrastructure investment fund, said Monday that they won’t support the package as things stand.

Conservative leader Friedrich Merz, who won last month’s German election, is trying to put together a coalition with outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats. Last week, the two sides said they would seek to exempt some defense spending from the nation’s tight self-imposed rules on running up debt, an issue of growing urgency as doubts increase about the U.S. commitment to European allies.

They also want to set up a 500 billion euro ($533 billion) fund, financed by borrowing, to invest in Germany’s creaking infrastructure over the next 10 years and help restore the economy to growth.

Their plans will need a two-thirds majority in parliament because Germany’s “debt brake” — which allows new borrowing worth only 0.35% of annual gross domestic product — is anchored in the constitution. And they are trying to get them through the outgoing parliament next week, rather than the newly elected one, because parties that for different reasons are unlikely to agree to the plans have just over one-third of the seats in the new chamber.

Since Merz’s Union bloc and the Social Democrats don’t have enough seats to pass the plans on their own, they need support from the environmentalist Greens.

The leadership of the Greens’ parliamentary group decided Monday to recommend that their lawmakers reject the plans, co-leader Katharina Dröge said. She said the Greens have long sought a reform of the “debt brake” to ease investment in the economy and measures against climate change, while Merz had insisted before the election that there was no need to finance such investments through borrowing.

Dröge argued that the prospective coalition partners’ proposed infrastructure fund wouldn’t actually target useful investments, but instead serve as a “treasure chest” for measures such as tax cuts.

Asked about the Greens’ comments, the general secretary of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, Carsten Linnemann, said talks would be held with the Greens “and then we will see how far we get.” His party also plans to talk to the pro-business Free Democrats, but that party has strongly criticized running up more debt.