BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday (Dec 9) that the Trump administration’s new national security strategy underscores the need for Europe to become “much more independent” from the United States in terms of security policy.
Merz also pushed back against the notion that European democracy needs saving.
The US strategy, published Friday, paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties, and was critical of European free speech and migration policy.
On Monday, European Council President António Costa warned the US against interfering in Europe’s affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.
Merz, the leader of the European Union’s most populous nation and its biggest economy, said he wasn’t surprised by the substance of the strategy as it was largely in line with a lecture US Vice President JD Vance gave to European allies in Munich in February.
Parts of the document are understandable, but “some of it is unacceptable for us from the European point of view,” he told reporters in the western German city of Mainz.
“The Americans want to save democracy in Europe now, I don’t see any need for that,” Merz said. “If it needed to be saved, we would manage that alone.”
He added that the new US document “confirms my assessment that we in Europe, and so also in Germany, must become much more independent from the US in terms of security policy. This is not a surprise, but it has now been confirmed again. It has been documented.”
