Former chancellor Angela Merkel has called for Germany to relax its “debt brake”, in a sign of the growing political pressure to overhaul a borrowing cap that many economists say is too inflexible.
Merkel, who served as chancellor between 2005 and 2021 and introduced the debt brake into Germany’s constitution, made the proposal for change in her autobiography Freedom: Memories 1954-2021.
It comes just days after Friedrich Merz, leader of Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, and the man polls suggest could become Germany’s next chancellor in snap elections next February, indicated for the first time that the rule could be modified.