Germany’s incoming government plans to create a National Security Council in the Chancellery to streamline decision-making on foreign and security policy.
The body “is to coordinate the key issues of an integrated security policy, develop strategies and provide strategic foresight, undertake a joint situation assessment and thus be the body for joint political decision-making,” according to a coalition agreement announced in Berlin on Wednesday.
The deal was presented by Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Germany needs a federal and cross-departmental national crisis team and a national situation centre in the Chancellery, the text said.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) have long campaigned for a different security architecture in Germany under the umbrella of the Chancellery, but the SPD and the Greens had resisted the idea.
In a speech in January, Germany’s incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz said the planned council would be “the hub for the federal government’s collective political decision-making on all essential issues of foreign policy, security policy, development policy and European policy.”
A Federal Security Council, which meets in secret, already exists and deals with arms exports abroad, among other things.