OPINION:
Disastrous immigration policies, reckless spending and cratering birth rates have set Europe on a perilous path. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the weekend recognized the need to change course.
“We still have some big challenges ahead of us, for example, in social policy. We know that what we have today is not sustainable,” Mr. Merz told fellow members of the Christian Democratic Union political party. “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we achieve economically. Therefore, we will have to change it.”
That’s a bold statement in a country that offers its citizens, and any Third World visitors who happen to drop in, generous cradle-to-grave freebies. Mr. Merz wants to cut back on the giveaways while expanding free market alternatives. He even proposed something that sounds an awful lot like the Trump Account that was created in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“I can even remember my children and their graduation, when they received a little savings account from the local savings bank. … We’re starting it again now. Not with a savings account, but with a small capital account, so that children learn what saving means and that you have to save if you want to have something in old age and cannot rely solely on those who work in our country,” Mr. Merz said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban cited the German leader’s words as evidence that his country has been headed in the right direction: “The Western welfare state has failed, so Hungary made the right move back in 2010 by switching to a work-based economy.”
Mr. Orban implemented structural changes because he believed it was the right thing to do. Mr. Merz, by contrast, appears to be doing so because he was forced by Donald Trump’s reassertion of American influence on the world stage.
U.S. taxpayers will no longer be shipping hundreds of billions of dollars to prolong the war between Russia and Ukraine, leaving the continent to pay for its own defense. Moreover, American exporters will no longer face protectionist barriers in European markets, and this realignment will be costly for Germany.
Compounding Berlin’s woes, its electric grid remains severely underpowered thanks to the leftist government that swapped nuclear power plants with energy sources that sputter on cloudy days. Mr. Merz famously referred to the architects of these ideas as “nutcases,” and he wasn’t wrong.
Germany pays the highest price of anyone in Europe to keep the lights on at 46 cents per kilowatt-hour. With energy costs more than double the U.S. rate, the nation’s famed industrial might can’t compete with any country using coal-powered factories.
Given the economic situation, German bean counters struggle to find enough cash to hand to the loafers on the dole. Of the 5 million able-bodied adults receiving government subsidies, more than 60% aren’t even German. In several states, 3 out of 4 are recent arrivals primarily from Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq.
It’s uncertain whether the half-measures Mr. Merz envisions will be sufficient to reverse leftism’s suicidal impulse, but we can learn from his dilemma. It proves the wisdom of Mr. Trump’s commitment to deportation and voluntary remigration for illegal aliens.
Globalists succeeded in replacing Germans with newcomers from the Third World who reject Western values. America still has time to reverse its schemes before the creditors come calling.
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