Martin Schulz prioritises social spending over defence

Germany’s Social Democrat (SPD) leader Martin Schulz has said he would prioritise social spending over defence spending if he was elected chancellor in September.

In a clear snub to US president Donald Trump’s criticism of European Nato members’ defence underspending, Mr Schulz disputed the terms of 2014 commitments to boost spending to 2 per cent of economic output

Almost three months after entering the race to unseat chancellor Angela Merkel, and with his SPD now neck-and-neck with Dr Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in polls, Mr Schulz said that, on his watch, European and Nato policy would see a shift.

“A focus not just on stability but also growth stimulation is necessary in all member states,” said the SPD leader to the foreign press on Monday in his party’s Berlin headquarters, the Willy Brandt Haus.

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The ex-European Parliament president said he would press for “further development” of the so-called Juncker strategic investment plan, worth €315 billion over three years and work to clear Germany’s own multibillion infrastructure backlog.

“Growth and stability are two sides of the same coin,” he said, calling for an expansion of the EU’s core policy definitions to include social components such as employment.

Mr Schulz, a 61-year-old political veteran with no federal experience in Germany, declined to comment on weekend speculation that SPD pressure forced German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble to back further bailout funding for Greece.

After years of EU austerity-heavy reforms, he said, it lay in Germany’s interest as a major exporting nation to have strong neighbours and a prosperous EU.

Prioritising a new social component in EU policy is an election priority, he said, as is shrugging off US military spending pressure.

Mr Schulz insisted an SPD-lead Germany would remain a “strong and dependable” partner in foreign policy and as a Nato member but he disputed claims Germany had committed to spending 2 per cent of economic output on defence. He said the government would not commit to a “considerable financial burden” of spending “€20 billion or more in the coming years” on arms.

‘Disarmament spiral’

“What we need is not rearmament but disarmament spiral, and much more investment in prevention,” he said.

For him the SPD’s disarmament tradition takes precedence over the Cardiff meeting in 2014 of Nato member states to “aim to move towards the 2 per cent guideline within a decade”.

On Brexit, senior SPD officials say to expect no vast difference from Chancellor Schulz to Chancellor Merkel. But on wider EU policy, the ex-European Parliament president insists he would not “play the game where everything good is national and everything bad is from Brussels”.

The Schulz SPD is confident that they can win over voters – particularly younger supporters shaken by Brexit and Donald Trump’s election – by promising new kind of European solidarity.

While the SPD leader favours revisiting who does what in the EU – Brussels or member states – he saw no alternative to European co-operation on big challenges from tax avoidance to terrorism prevention.

Asked for his advice to struggling Social Democrats around Europe, he urges them to adapt and follow advice of ex-SPD leader Willy Brandt: “Every era needs its own specific answers.”

Specific answers are in short supply over Mr Schulz’s favoured coalition partners after September’s poll. Keeping his options has allowed the CDU claim that a vote for the Schulz SPD is a vote for the Left Party, successors to East Germany’s communists. Asked if fears of such a taboo-breaking alliance cost the SPD votes in a recent state poll in Saarland, and might do again in September, Mr Schulz says: “No, I don’t.”