Leading German chancellor candidate Merz vows more assertive global role

By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke

BERLIN (Reuters) - German opposition leader Friedrich Merz, tipped to become the next chancellor, said on Thursday he wanted to win back the lost trust of key allies and ensure Berlin is more assertive on the global stage in a speech laying out his foreign policy plans.

He also said calls by U.S. President Donald Trump, who returned to power on Jan. 20, for Europe to do more to defend itself presented an opportunity for the continent to strengthen.

Germany's partners have struggled in recent years to strategise with Berlin due to infighting within Chancellor Olaf Scholz's awkward three-way coalition, Merz said in a speech that focused more on Europe than transatlantic relations.

That discord ultimately led to the coalition's collapse late last year, prompting a snap election on Feb. 23 that Merz's conservatives are on track to win by a large margin.

If elected head of government, Merz said, he would create a national security council anchored in the chancellery to better coordinate all issues that touch on foreign, development and defence policy across the different ministries, so Berlin would speak with one strong voice.

"The times when European partners received different answers from Berlin - depending on whether they were in the Chancellery, the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Finance - must be a thing of the past," Merz told the event in Berlin.

The 69-year-old conservative, who was a deputy in the European Parliament from 1989-94, said he would expect all cabinet members to regularly attend EU Council meetings in Brussels to ensure Germany's voice was well represented.

He would only appoint ministers and deputy ministers from his party who were able to communicate in English.

"The overriding maxim of (my) government will therefore be that Germany can be relied on again, we keep our word, we will make decisions - and once a decision has been made we stick to it," he said.

FENCE-MENDING WITHIN EUROPE

Key would be fixing relations with top European allies, he said. Germany needed to speak more with Poland and better coordinate stances with France for the European Council, which groups the 27 heads of government in the European Union.

Merz also said Germany would no longer restrict weapons deliveries to Israel, he said, rather send it whatever it needs.

"It must become unmistakably clear again: Germany is

not caught between two stools, (rather) Germany stands firmly on the side of Israel," he said.

Europe also needs to reform its military procurement system to get more bang for its buck, he said. Currently European countries were developing, producing and maintaining 178 weapons systems compared to just 30 for the United States.

"These redundancies cost a lot of money and waste potential," he said. "I want 'Made in Europe' to match the quality and quantity of defence equipment of the USA."

Asked about Trump's insistence the United States needed to take control of Greenland from Denmark, he played down the remarks, saying they amounted to a strategy to focus attention on the strategic importance of the vast Arctic island.

Denmark acknowledged earlier this month that it had long neglected the defence of Greenland.

Merz further urged the United States and the EU to finally agree on a free trade deal rather than fall into a tariff spiral, as many fear with Trump and his "America First" agenda, that would only make everyone poorer.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke and Sarah Marsh; editing by Mark Heinrich)