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It took U.S. president Donald Trump mere weeks to shake up the global order. Photo: World Economic Forum. license
Having secured victory in the German election with less than 30 percent of the vote, conservative leader Friedrich Merz will need to build a new coalition government.
As the new U.S. administration under president Donald Trump upends decades of transatlantic relations and the wider geopolitical order, Germany faces the challenging task of resetting relations with its neighbours to ensure a strong EU role in the world.
The first weeks of re-elected U.S. president Donald Trump in office have set a challenging scene for the next German government after the snap election, heralding in a new era of geopolitics and pushing transatlantic relations to a new low. Defence policy and the future of Ukraine are in the spotlight, but the coalition that will govern Europe’s biggest economy for the next four years will have a key role in making the EU competitive on the world stage, further shaping the climate-friendly transition and ensuring energy security.
Europeans have struggled to react as the new U.S. administration decided to sideline both Ukraine and the EU in initial talks with Russia over a possible peace deal and thus ending the approach of a united voice of western countries since the start of Russia’s war. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth emphasised that America would no longer be the “primary guarantor” of European security, which it has been for decades.
And in a speech that stumped the high-level audience at the Munich Security Conference in Germany’s south, U.S. vice president JD Vance accused Europe of censoring free speech, effectively coming out in support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party just days before the snap election. One day later, chancellor Olaf Scholz told the security conference audience that Germany would “not accept it if outsiders interfere in our democracy, in our elections.”
Thus, the deepening of the biggest foreign policy challenge Europe has faced in decades has ended up squarely in Germany’s campaign sprint before the election on 23 February.
“The EU is currently somewhat paralysed by anti-European right-wing governments or France having to deal with internal political crises, so the next German government must also ensure that EU external relations are better coordinated towards a strong EU role in the world,” says Marc Weissgerber, head of the Berlin office of think tank E3G.
It is a scandal how unprepared we are in Europe for what‘s happening.
-Jana Puglierin, ECFR
“The response to Trump must be a strong EU,” he told Clean Energy Wire, adding that in the geopolitical context, the EU needs a strong and pro-European approach by its largest member state Germany.
Following the break-up of chancellor Scholz's coalition government, Germans head to the polls on 23 February to elect a new parliament and decide the make-up of the next government. Until now, surveys have shown that voters care most about migration policy and the economy, but international security as well as the climate remained among the top five issues. In any case, they are among the biggest challenges to face the next government.
Next government must rethink foreign policy
While German and European reactions around the start of Trump’s new term emphasised transatlantic friendship, leaders are only slowly waking up to the new reality.
“It is a scandal how unprepared we are in Europe for what‘s happening,” wrote Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, in a message on Bluesky. She argued that recent U.S. comments should not have come as a surprise.
Her colleague, Rafael Loss, said that Germany’s next government would have to rethink some of the assumptions that have long guided the country’s foreign policy, such as the role of multilateral institutions and of Germany inside the European Union, or the transatlantic relationship. “All these are in flux,” Loss told Clean Energy Wire.
A survey conducted by the think tank has shown that a majority of Europeans no longer see the U.S. as an ally with shared interests and values. This should come as no surprise, as Trump questions the very idea of liberal democracy, rejects the green transformation and announced on his first day in office to withdraw the country from the Paris Climate Agreement – again. Instead, most respondents see the U.S. as a necessary partner with which the union must strategically cooperate.
