Berlin | Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has opened talks with the Social Democrats to quickly approve as much as €200 billion ($330 billion) in special defence spending, according to a person familiar with those discussions.
Officials from Merz’s Christian Democrats and the SPD are discussing ways to get around Germany’s tight restrictions on government borrowing in order to free up resources to beef up the country’s dilapidated military, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named.
