{"id":278593,"date":"2025-07-21T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T00:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278593\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T00:00:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T00:00:19","slug":"germanys-merz-admits-europe-has-been-a-free-rider-on-us-defense-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278593\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merz admits Europe has been a \u2018free-rider\u2019 on US defense \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, NATO members agreed<\/a> to spend five percent of their GDP on defense, including 3.5 percent on “hard defense” like weapons and troops.<\/p>\n

Berlin has pledged to reach<\/a> that 3.5 percent spending target by 2029, marking the country\u2019s most ambitious rearmament effort since the end of the Cold War. It means passing significant constitutional reforms<\/a> allowing huge borrowing.<\/p>\n

Merz has met Donald Trump three times since becoming chancellor in May and told the BBC he got on well with the U.S. president.<\/p>\n

“I think President Trump is on the same page; we are trying to bring this war [in Ukraine] to an end,” said Merz. “We are on the phone once a week; we are co-ordinating our efforts.”<\/p>\n

But the chancellor said he had not changed his mind that Trump was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” a comment he made after his election victory<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

Trump was, Merz argued, “not as clear and as committed as former U.S. presidents were, former U.S. administrations were.”<\/p>\n

Merz said of the spending uplift: “We are not strong enough, our army is not strong enough, so that’s the reason why we are spending a lot of money.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, NATO members agreed to spend five percent of their GDP on defense, including 3.5 percent on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[473,32,33,2000,299,1945,1824,811,49,771,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-278593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-defense","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-friedrich-merz","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-security","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-war","18":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114888286265145254","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}