German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for European and Asian middle powers to build a strategic alliance in trade, technology and security, warning that an erosion of the established global order threatened their shared interests.
“We stand on the threshold of a new geopolitical era,” Merz said on Tuesday in a keynote speech at Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, his first stop of a week-long Asia trip that will also take him to Japan and South Korea.
“Our freedom, our sovereignty, our security and our prosperity are at stake,” Merz said, pitching for closer cooperation between mid-sized powers in Europe and Asia.
Merz proposed an interregional agreement with members of the 12-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, that includes Japan, Britain, Canada and Singapore.
Together with the EU, these partners “account for more than a third of global trade,” he said.
The German chancellor described the push for closer Europe-Asia ties as “long- term and strategic in nature” and said it was “one of our most important responses to the new era”.
He said, Europe and Asia must reduce “unhealthy, one-sided dependencies” in supply chains, technologies and raw materials.
But where trade competition was “distorted due to systemic overcapacity or restrictions on exports and market access, remedies are needed,” Merz said.
EU ministers last week called for deals with Beijing to curb imports across sectors, including chemicals and machinery, to address a goods trade deficit that has swelled to more than €1bil (RM4.5bil) a day. — Reuters
