Ayhan Simsek<\/p>\n
14 May 2026\u2022Update: 14 May 2026<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday said Europe was \u201cwrong\u201d to believe its values alone could guarantee peace and security, arguing the European Union must strengthen its economic and military power to confront growing global challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope has woken up. Europe is strengthening itself economically and in terms of security policy,\u201d Merz said at the International Charlemagne Prize award ceremony in Aachen.<\/p>\n
Merz argued that the bloc could only assert itself internationally through combined economic and military strength while reaffirming Europe\u2019s support for Ukraine against Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe in Europe have relied too heavily in the past on the belief that the power of humanistic European-Western ideas would magically transform the world into a realm of freedom and peace. We were wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The German leader said Europe must move beyond what he described as \u201cfalse optimism\u201d while continuing to defend a rules-based international order.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope has the opportunity to take part in shaping the new world order so that it is governed by norms and rules rather than arbitrariness and the law of the strong. We have that opportunity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bHe added the European Union was forging new trade partnerships worldwide to reduce strategic dependencies and strengthen its global position.<\/p>\n
Merz also praised former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who received the Charlemagne Prize, for his proposals to reform the EU amid intensifying global competition.<\/p>\n
He said European leaders had embraced key recommendations from Draghi\u2019s report on European competitiveness and were working to implement reforms aimed at strengthening the bloc\u2019s economy and unity. \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayhan Simsek 14 May 2026\u2022Update: 14 May 2026 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday said Europe was \u201cwrong\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,2990],"class_list":{"0":"post-13843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-germany","9":"tag-sitekeywords"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}