Germany should consider discussing a European nuclear umbrella with France, Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil said in an interview with Der Spiegel news magazine for an issue to be published on Friday.
Klingbeil referred to an offer from Paris to make the French nuclear umbrella more useful for European security. “We should enter into this discussion,” he said.
Klingbeil said he was not questioning NATO’s nuclear deterrent, nor the stationing of US nuclear weapons in Germany. “I want to maintain this transatlantic pillar of our security,” he said.
Klingbeil said that Germany had committed itself to not possessing its own nuclear weapons and that should stand.
“Nevertheless, we should now accept the French offer. A strategic dialogue on this between Germany and France is appropriate at this time,” he said.
German planes can carry US nuclear bombs in the event of war. The bombs are stored in Germany under a NATO agreement.
Military analysts have warned repeatedly that the nuclear capabilities of France and Britain are not able to replace the US deterrent. There are also fears in Europe that the United States could change its own assurances if Europe develops an independent nuclear deterrent.
Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative alliance, rejected a purely European nuclear deterrence.
“With respect to the nuclear umbrella, we have to consider very carefully whether we really have the confidence to erect a nuclear umbrella in Europe with the French and the British that is just as effective as what we have in NATO through the Americans,” he told broadcaster RTL/ntv.
Merz leads a broad centrist coalition combining his conservative alliance and Klingbeil’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).