Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.21-101658/https://www.ft.com/content/bf9dde37-2dc8-44df-b5f5-ef5dece888f6
On Friday, the constitutional reform secured the support of more than two-thirds of the seats in the Bundesrat, the upper house that represents Germany’s 16 federal states.
The changes, which were approved by the Bundestag earlier this week, loosen the country’s constitutional borrowing restrictions to allow unlimited defence spending and create a special €500bn, 12-year vehicle to modernise the country’s infrastructure.
I thin that’s just what we call “spinner” and does not represent the party line. I think if you look at the strength of the signals, uncapping safety spending over an amount where reaching anyways is a very fucking strong signal. If they actually spend accordingly which I thin they will do because every single one of those fuckers will find a way to make their hometown benefit from it. Also it’s easy to sell as nationalistic/patriotic preventing the usual storms of bullshit around government spending.
The autocratic twist I agree on but not to the degree that it immediately threatens our democracy, maybe by proxy though.
Although I have some criticism on the specifics of the deal it is a very strong sign of strong agency to be able to do this immediately after an election even before the new parliament is constituted. I believe that strong agency is the biggest threat to Russia actually.
No, it’s not just random “idiots.” Someone just submitted this to !dach: https://www.t-online.de/id_100620746/ (German).
The article makes it clear that there are near-direct personal lines between pro-Nord Stream law firms and Merz. Merz himself is a former lobbyist for BASF, which used to be heavily involved in importing Russian gas through its Wintershall subsidiary.
In addition, overall corruption will be front and center in the new German government. Merz is a former lobbyist; the projected new minister of agriculture, Felßner, is an agricultural lobbyist; the projected new president of Bundestag, Klöckner, is known for being overly friendly with Nestlé; Spahn is known for having sunk billions into FFP mask deals that included networks close to CxU; Dobrindt started the toll project that was non-compliant with EU regulation and sunk hundreds of millions […] A bunch of power-hungry asshats that played obstructionist opposition for 3 years, so they could come into power and direct positive cashflows into their own pockets and ruin trust in democratic systems at the same time. SPD will have a hard time reigning in “deregulation” of anti-corruption measures as well.
That money and the weapons it buys can be used against anyone, not just Putin. It might just be another vehicle for corruption.
They’re always moving the line a little bit, finding out what they can do.