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German election winner Friedrich Merz is looking at using the outgoing parliament to lift the country’s strict “debt brake” before newly elected far-right and far-left lawmakers can take their seats.
The manoeuvre would allow the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union to reform the borrowing cap to allow more defence spending, which is opposed by the rightwing Alternative for Germany (AfD) and leftwing Die Linke.
The AfD and Die Linke together secured more than a third of the seats in the Bundestag in Sunday’s election, giving them the power in the next parliament to block the constitutional change the debt brake reform would require.
But Merz noted that mainstream parties could still act under the current legislature, which can convene until March 24.
“The German Bundestag is able to make decisions at any time . . . The German Bundestag is able to act without any interruption, even after elections,” he said.
“Before I speculate publicly about it, allow me to talk about it with the Social Democrats [SPD], the FDP and also the Greens now in the next few days . . . So that means we still have four weeks to think about it,” he added.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel lashed out at the idea as “electoral fraud”. Writing on X, she accused Merz of “throwing all his election promises overboard on day one”, adding: “This is politics against the will of the people!”
During the campaign Merz insisted he was committed to the debt brake — which limits government borrowing and keeps the structural deficit at 0.35 per cent of GDP — while not ruling out discussions over how to amend it.
But economists have warned that without changing the provision or creating a special off-budget fund, it will be impossible to finance tens of billions of euros of urgently needed extra investment in the Eurozone’s largest economy.
That includes money for crumbling transport and communications infrastructure as well as a much higher defence budget in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The scale of the challenge has been compounded by US President Donald Trump’s recent pivot towards Russia and his threat to pull US security guarantees from Europe, which has forced European leaders to hold crisis talks on how to respond.
Defence minister Boris Pistorius praised Merz’s move, stressing the need for his ministry’s budget to double to more than €100bn.
Pistorius, an SPD politician who has said he would like to remain in his job after the change of government, told the tabloid Bild: “I am glad the CDU has declared its apparent willingness to act on this. This shows a sense of responsibility.”
Although Merz has said that he believes he can find the funds to finance investment by slashing welfare payments and stimulating economic growth, many analysts do not believe such measures will be enough.
While highly unusual, convening an outgoing Bundestag to approve decisions is not without precedent.
Some economists warned that Merz’s gambit could risk falling foul of Germany’s constitutional court, which in 2023 blew a €60bn hole in the government’s budget by striking down its repurposing of pandemic-era funds.
But three experts on German constitutional law told the FT that there was unlikely to be a legal obstacle to Merz’s proposal.
“From a constitutional perspective, the old Bundestag is fully capable of taking action until its last session,” said Hanno Kube, a law professor at Heidelberg University. “Whether one wants to use the last days of a legislative period for a major political project — in this case a constitutional amendment — is therefore a political question.”
Green leader Robert Habeck said on Monday he favoured a quick reform of the debt brake before the new parliament is installed but outgoing finance minister Jörg Kukies, from the SPD, said there was “far too little time” to ram through such changes, adding it would be a “questionable political signal if constitutional amendments were now made with an old majority”.
