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Boris Pistorius, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, is to remain Germany’s defence minister in Friedrich Merz’s new coalition as Europe’s largest democracy prepares to inject hundreds of billions of euros into its military.
The 65-year-old Social Democrat — and Germany’s most popular politician — was nominated by his party on Monday as one of seven SPD ministers to join the government of conservative leader Merz, who will take office as chancellor tomorrow.
Other SPD cabinet picks include co-leader Lars Klingbeil, who is to become vice-chancellor and finance minister, and Bärbel Bas, a senior MP from the industrial Ruhr valley who will become labour minister.
The ministerial nominations come as Merz’s CDU, its Bavarian sister party the CSU, and the SPD are set to formally sign their coalition agreement on Monday — paving the way for Merz to be elected chancellor by the Bundestag on Tuesday. Merz is to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since the creation of the federal republic in 1949.
As defence minister under SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz, Pistorius has come to embody Germany’s military support for Kyiv since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Berlin is the second-largest supplier of military equipment to Kyiv, behind the US.
He will be in charge of accelerating the modernisation of the Bundeswehr, which started in earnest in 2022 when Scholz declared a Zeitenwende — a historic turning point — for Germany’s defence policy and set up an off-budget fund of €100bn to equip its military.
This effort was given a huge boost in the weeks following the victory of Merz’s Christian Democrats in elections in February. The conservative leader, who had previously refused to change the country’s constitutional borrowing limit, struck a deal with the SPD, his only viable coalition partner, to exempt most defence spending from the so-called debt brake.
Merz justified his sudden U-turn by citing the rapidly deteriorating transatlantic relationship under US President Donald Trump and the growing threat from Russia.
Economists have estimated Germany’s armed forces need more than €400bn in the coming years.
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