cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/61295662
Germany’s next chancellor signaled his willingness to provide Ukraine with long-range Taurus cruise missiles, marking a potential shift in Berlin’s military support as Kyiv continues to press for more high-precision weapons to hit deep into Russian-held territory, The Financial Times reported on April 13.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the expected successor to Olaf Scholz said that Germany should participate in supplying Taurus missiles if a joint decision is reached with European allies.
“Our European partners are already supplying cruise missiles,” Merz said. “The British are doing it, the French are doing it, and the Americans are doing it anyway.”
“This must be jointly agreed. And if it is agreed, then Germany should take part,” he added.
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He hasn’t been steady on that at all. His flip flopping around the Schuldenbremse topic ahead of the election was completely erratic.
He was indeed not completely consistent, but he never mentioned a 900bn€ package to sidestep the debt brake. He dithered between “absolutely no changes, the others are idiots and I will solve this with my superior instinct for economics and cutting social systems” and “maybe loosen it up a little bit but continued austerity is the goal.”
He said while talking to Süddeutsche Zeitung that he would be fine with doing away with the Schuldenbremse if it’s done for investments and infrastructure, which is pretty much what happened and the next day he was back on the party line saying there would be no reform.
There is no other word for it than erratic. However to anyone familiar with politics it was obvious that they had no other chance than to reform the Schuldenbremse because their program for the election had no other way to finance itself.