If Merz and the SPD "think that, because of the security threat posed by [Vladimir] Putin in the Kremlin — and, honestly, also Donald Trump in the White House — we will simply have to go along with this, then we reject that outright,” one of the Greens leaders, Felix Banaszak, said on Monday in Berlin.
Should the Greens follow through on their repudiation of Merz's plan, the decision would mark a stunning defeat for the chancellor-in-waiting just days after he announced a dramatic shift in German policy to embrace debt-fueled spending after many years of self-imposed austerity. More concretely, Merz and the SPD want to effectively exempt defense spending from the country’s constitutional debt brake, loosen borrowing rules for the country's 16 states, and create a €500 billion infrastructure fund.
Merz's sense of urgency stems from the fact that he has no more than two weeks to push the package through the current parliament. If he fails, it will be even harder for him to get the votes he needs. When the newly elected Bundestag convenes by March 25 at the latest, the far-right, pro-Kremlin Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and The Left party, which opposes military spending, will have the strength to block the spending package.
That means Merz is now dependent on the Greens, a party he often belittled ahead of the election, once vowing to pursue policies "for the majority of the population — those who think rationally and have all their marbles — not for some green and left-wing lunatics."
The Greens are now not particularly eager to make things easy for Merz.
Greens' demands
In particular, the Greens are demanding that Merz's planned infrastructure fund be used for investments to speed Germany's clean energy transition, even though Merz, ahead of the election, vowed to deprioritize climate policies. They also want a more expansive view of which defense expenditures could be exempted from the strictures of Germany's debt brake, including military aid to Ukraine.