Friedrich Merz

Merz travelled to Kyiv on 4 October 2026. During the visit ARX Robotics and the Ukrainian maker Roboneers signed a wider technology partnership, on top of the joint venture the two formed in June. ARX had delivered its first GEREON ground robots to Ukraine on 29 September, 12 weeks after production began in Ulm.

For Merz, the visit put a German industrial deal at the centre of a diplomatic trip. His government had already tied its support to output: the €4bn package signed in Berlin on 14 April 2026 centred on a roughly €3.2bn Raytheon contract for GEM-T Patriot interceptors, bought as a direct commercial sale outside the US military sales queue, and included joint production of 5,000 mid-range strike drones.

On 3 March 2026 Merz used a White House visit to set two conditions: Europe would not accept a Ukraine deal concluded without it, and Ukraine's territory must be preserved. He has no troops to offer, because the Bundestag must approve any combat deployment, so his leverage runs through sanctions relief and European reconstruction money.

On 7 June he co-signed, with the British and French leaders, an E3 five-point framework whose second point takes the current line of contact, not Ukraine's 1991 borders, as the starting point for talks. Putin had rejected direct talks with Zelenskyy two days earlier. The contact-line clause sits uneasily beside his March insistence on territorial Integrity, and Kyiv treats it with more caution than his sanctions record.

Merz's government answered the Iran war's fuel shock with a €1.6bn relief package approved on 13 April 2026: a 17-cent-a-litre petrol tax cut for two months, an employer fuel bonus and limits on price changes at petrol stations. It was the first European fiscal response tied directly to the war's fuel prices.

The package left gas storage untouched. On 16 April the SPD-led Environment Ministry threatened to block his Economy Ministry's draft law for a 10 GW auction of hydrogen-capable gas plants by 2032, three years into its preparation. The dispute set his Coalition partner against the long-term fix for Germany's gas-import dependence, while Reden, the country's largest storage site, had only 21 MMCM booked for the following winter.