Merkel’s CDU Backs More German Money for EU Budget, Laschet Says

Ben Sills
·2 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Armin Laschet, the regional premier who is a potential successor to Angela Merkel, said Germany should pay more into the next European Union budget and the chancellor’s party is ready to support that.

Laschet, 58, is head of Germany’s biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, and has been positioning himself for a possible run for the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union after party chief Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said last week that she will step down.

Germany has been resisting pressure to expand the EU’s next seven-year budget ahead of an extraordinary summit on Feb. 20. A spokesman for the finance ministry, which is run by Merkel’s Social Democrat coalition partner, on Friday pushed back against a report in Der Spiegel that said the chancellor is ready to increase Germany’s contribution.

“Germany will have to make a bigger contribution because the U.K. is going to leave,” Laschet said during a panel discussion at a security conference in Munich. He said a majority in the CDU will back that position.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said the overall size of the EU budget must increase if the bloc is to be able to finance its ambitions. “It’s not enough,“ Plenkovic said. “Very simple answer.”

Laschet also said that Germany’s coalition government has failed to deliver on its promise to drive Europe forward and called for more EU integration on foreign policy.

“We need fewer unanimity requirements and foreign policy that is more able to react,” he said. “Europe will only be taken seriously if it speaks with one voice and is capable of defining its own interests.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sills in Madrid at bsills@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Iain Rogers

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