Merz Responds to Industry Rebuke With Pledge to Move on Reforms

Chancellor Friedrich Merz told industry leaders that he’ll press ahead with his reform agenda after the head of a leading German business lobby called the conservative leader’s ruling coalition unreliable.

The country is confronting its gravest economic challenge since World War II, Merz told a gathering of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, or DIHK, in Berlin on Thursday. Conceding that his government had stumbled amid infighting, he pledged to carry on with the Social Democrats with a slate of reforms to the country’s social system.