Germany’s likely next Chancellor warned that Europe can no longer rely on the US to defend it unconditionally, on the eve of an election in which the country’s far-right, pro-Russian, anti-immigrant party is set to score the best result in its history.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, which polls say will top Sunday’s vote, suggested on Friday that Berlin instead seek deeper security assurances from the UK and France, Europe’s two nuclear weapon states.
He made his comments as he expressed doubts that the US under President Donald Trump would fully accept its Nato treaty obligations, the cornerstone of the transatlantic alliance.
Asked if he would “bet everything” that the US president would abide by Nato’s article five mutual defence commitment, Merz said: “We must be prepared for the fact that Donald Trump will no longer fully accept the promise of assistance under the Nato treaty.”
The centre-right leader called on Europeans to “make every effort to at least be able to defend the . . . continent on their own” as he proposed the discussions with London and Paris “about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security from the UK and France, could also apply to us”.
The candid remarks underscore the deep concern in European capitals about Washington’s faltering commitment to the continent’s security in a week when the US moved to heal ties with Russia and blamed Ukraine for the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion.
On Friday, Germany’s interior ministry warned of a Russian disinformation operation to influence the election campaign with fake videos spreading on social media in Hamburg and Leipzig.
Security agencies in Leipzig and Hamburg have identified multiple pseudo-media sites and social media accounts as part of the network, reinforcing concerns over Russian interference in democratic processes.
Merz’s comments also come as opinion polls suggest that the insurgent far-right Alternative for Germany party is poised to secure a fifth of the vote, double its score in the last contest.
German mainstream politicians were horrified last week when US vice-president JD Vance appeared to insinuate that, unless Europe’s political mainstream co-operated with far-right parties, “there is nothing America can do for you”.
Vance subsequently met AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, but not Olaf Scholz, the country’s centre-left Chancellor, at the Munich Security Conference.
Green candidate Robert Habeck, the outgoing economy minister, depicted the election and the government it will lead to, as perhaps Germany’s last chance to hold off the far-right. “If we don’t solve the problems in the next four years, right-wing populism will be unstoppable,” he said on Friday.
A Forsa poll on Friday put the CDU on 29 per cent, the AfD on 21 per cent, and Scholz’s SPD on 15 per cent — heading for its worst defeat since 1887.
Merz’s task of forming a government would be made more difficult by a strong performance by the AfD, which he has vowed not to partner with.
It would be even more of a challenge if smaller parties such as the Liberals, the far-left Die Linke and a new party led by the leftist Sahra Wagenknecht made it over Germany’s 5 per cent electoral threshold, fracturing parliament further.
In an indication of the AfD’s growing confidence, Weidel posted a compilation on Friday of the high-level international backing the party has recently won. The video featured Vance, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump confidant, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Herbert Kickl, leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party.
By contrast, the party, whose former leader once dismissed the Nazi period as a mere “piece of bird shit”, was previously shunned even by far-right politicians such as France’s Marine Le Pen.
The AfD’s surge, fuelled by growing angst over immigration and deep discontent with Scholz’s government, would mark a sharp swing to the right in the Eurozone’s largest economy, which has been grappling with high energy prices and competition from cheaper Chinese manufacturers.
“Markets and election polls are deceptively calm about the election,” said Tomasz Wieladek, chief European economist at asset manager T Rowe Price, citing the risk of a blocking minority that would prevent reform and potentially hit the euro.
On Friday, Merz, 69, who left politics for a decade after losing a power struggle against party rival Angela Merkel, also emphasised the scale of the economic challenge. “The most important bet on the future is that we marshal our strength to get this economy growing again,” the former BlackRock Germany chair said.
Merz also voiced his concern this week that while he hopes the US “remains a democracy and does not slide into an authoritarian populist system . . . it may be that America will enter a longer period of instability and that this populism, this autocratic behaviour of the heads of state, will continue”.
Additional reporting by Ian Smith