Germany’s leading establishment parties reached a grand coalition deal on Wednesday, bringing Europe’s largest economy a step closer to having a formal government amid severe domestic and global challenges.
The timeline: The deal between the conservative CDU/CSU, led by likely-Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and their rival Social Democrats, or SDP, requires formal approval in the next several weeks. The new government should be in place by May.
They’ve got their work cut out. The Trump administration’s America First approach is forcing Berlin to increase defense spending while also tending to a sluggish economy that will be further maligned by US tariffs. Meanwhile, social tensions over the impact of mass immigration persist.
Plus: These parties aren’t popular. The CDU placed first in the February elections but has shed support since then, partly because it struck a deal with the SDP to skirt long-standing debt limits to fund a big defense spending boost. That deal would not have passed the incoming Bundestag, given the strong electoral performance of the anti-establishment parties.
The numbers don’t lie: Polls already show the far-right, anti-immigration AfD, which Merz has sworn not to work with, is now – for the first time – the most popular party in Germany.Military service builds the skills we value most. Bank of America is committed to hiring 10,000 more people with military backgrounds in the next five years, building on previous military hiring commitments made over the last decade. Read the story.
In the latest episode of The Debrief, Eurasia Group’s María José Valverde explains how nature credits work, why they’re harder to measure than carbon credits, and what it would take to make the system credible.
The UN’s annual climate summit, this year known as COP31, kicked off in Turkey on Monday, as the world gets hotter – and political temperatures rise.