Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s strained government agreed to pursue larger pension reforms and seek exemptions on the EU’s ban on CO2-emitting cars.
BERLIN — The leaders of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative-led coalition on Friday announced accords on key issues that had divided his government in recent weeks.
The internal disagreements — over pension reforms and a phaseout of the combustion engine — had turned into a test of the viability of Merz’s relatively weak and ideologically divergent coalition government. The new agreements, reached after a night of long negotiations, may have staved off a larger crisis of confidence in Merz’s government.
Members of Merz’s coalition sought to portray the agreements as evidence that the government is functioning smoothly.
“Sometimes the image that people paint — saying that everything is stuck and so on — doesn’t match what I experienced yesterday,” said Lars Klingbeil, the leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which governs in coalition with Merz’s conservative alliance. “We really did push forward far-reaching changes for this country in constructive debates.”
The agreements announced Friday revolve around a pension package lawmakers are set to vote on in December that a faction of Merz’s own conservatives had railed against, as well as a deal on Germany’s position on the EU’s push to phase out the combustion engine.
In the case of the pension reform, Merz sought to placate conservative rebels by vowing to take on a second, more far-reaching set of pension system reforms that would involve implementing the recommendations of an expert commission as early as next year. Previously, the coalition had agreed on a lengthier timeframe.
“There is now a firm agreement,” Merz said in view of the immediate pension reform package set to go for a vote. “We will come to a decision next week, and it is not just a gut feeling, but a well-founded hope, based on the discussions we had this morning, that our colleagues now see that we are really serious about these reforms and that we are now going down this path together.”
With regard to EU plans to ban carbon-emitting engines from 2035, Merz said he would write a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday to urge Brussels to apply extensive exemptions — including on dual-motor vehicles, plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles with range extenders and “highly efficient” combustion engines. That announcement signaled that the SPD has effectively backed off its previous support for EU green regulations for cars.
“We ask the Commission, in a comprehensive sense, to adapt and correct the regulations for mobility,” said Merz. “This concerns in particular the compatibility of competitiveness — the industrial competitiveness of the European automotive industry — with the demands we place on climate protection.”
Merz’s coalition has a majority of just 12 votes in the Bundestag, making his government vulnerable to even modest defections in the ranks.
Conservative Bavarian State Premier Markus Söder on Friday signaled satisfaction with the agreements.
“Everything we did yesterday is good for Germany, good for the economy and bad for radicals,” he said in view of the surging far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. “They are waiting outside the door for us to fail together. That is their great hope, that we will fail.”