Likely next German chancellor Merz questions NATO's future in 'current form'

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's likely next Chancellor Friedrich Merz questioned on Sunday whether NATO would remain in its "current form" by June in light of comments by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, and said Europe must quickly establish an independent defence capability.

"I would never have thought that I would have to say something like this in a TV show but, after Donald Trump's remarks last week...it is clear that this government does not care much about the fate of Europe," Merz told German public broadcaster ARD after his conservatives won a national election.

Last week, the Trump administration shocked European allies by telling them they must take care of their own security and rely less on the United States, while announcing talks with Russia to end the war in Ukraine without involving Europe.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned Europeans "stark strategic realities" would prevent the U.S. from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.

Referring to a NATO summit scheduled for June, Merz said he was curious to see "whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form then or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly".

Asked about Merz's remarks, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said: "It signals we are at the start of a new era."

"The era that started at the fall of the Berlin Wall is now over," Veldkamp said, speaking ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, adding that Europeans had to have "realistic expectations" about their relations with the United States.

On Friday, Merz told public broadcaster ZDF that Germany would need to come to terms with the possibility that Trump might not stick with NATO's mutual-defence pledge unreservedly.

He said this meant that Berlin might need to become less reliant on the U.S. with regard to their nuclear umbrella, too, and advocated talks with Europe's nuclear powers France and Britain about an expansion of their nuclear protection.

Merz, a transatlanticist, has been more hawkish against Russia than outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, suggesting medium-range Taurus missiles might be sent to Kyiv under his rule, something Scholz opposed.

(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; additional reporting by Miranda Murray and Madeline Chambers in Berlin, Bart Meijer in Amsterdam; editing by Diane Craft, Ingrid Melander)