Roads, railway system to be priorities in Germany’s special fund investments – Merz

Railway and road infrastructure are priority areas for Germany’s major investment package for infrastructure and climate neutrality, the country’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, told newspaper Handelsblatt in an interview. Besides digitalisation, the rail and road network “above all” should be the focus of the 500-billion-euro special fund the aspiring coalition parties - Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD) - adopted in parliament together with the Green Party at the launch of their coalition negotiations in March. “We will not pointlessly throw money out of the window but responsibly invest it for the benefit of the young generation,” Merz said about the spending package that required a reform of Germany’s constitutional debt brake.

The CDU leader said the spending package would enable the country to leave its economic doldrums behind at a time when it is facing multiple challenges in global trade and security policy. “Global markets, cheap input products especially from China, cheap energy especially from Russia, refinement in Germany and then off into the world – this was Germany’s business model. And it’s now been called into question,” he argued. Global trade has been “shaken to the core” in recent months, Merz said, adding that the policies of US president Donald Trump are possibly laying the groundwork for a new financial crisis. “Europe needs a convincing answer to this.” Buying gas from the US would continue to be an element of German energy policy, Merz said, adding that the construction of new gas plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies would mean that Germany’s “one-sided fixation on hydrogen will be abolished.”

In a separate interview on public broadcaster ARD, Merz said it was not clear whether his prospective coalition government would introduce a so-called ‘climate bonus’ (Klimageld) to compensate citizens for rising carbon prices, a promise made during the election campaign.

The CDU/CSU  and SPD presented their coalition treaty in the past week with a focus on largely continuing Germany's wider climate and energy policy. Faced with economic stagnation and the geopolitical shake-up after the US election, however, the coalition parties put greater emphasis on economic competitiveness than on more ambitious climate action.