Could 23 February 2025 become known as Europe’s Independence Day? It might as well be if the winner of Germany’s election, Friedrich Merz, has his way.

It was striking that Merz, the quintessential German Atlanticist and fiscal hawk who many considered hopelessly stuck in the 1980s, should celebrate his victory by knocking away one of the fundamental pillars of German conservative politics since Konrad Adenauer, the country’s first postwar chancellor. ‘My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA’, he said in his first post-election interview.

Some other leaders are still trying to have their cake and eat it: talking about defending Europe while working with the United States. Not Merz, who has launched what amounts to a full-frontal attack on Germany’s closest ally, even going so far as to accuse the US of election interference, on par with Russia.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, US-Europe relations have been mired in a fundamental paradox. On one hand, Europeans are trying to demonstrate to Trump that they are willing to do more in exchange for US security guarantees. On the other hand, the US whose protection they seek is trying to force a NATO ally to give up its own territory and pressing Ukraine to consent to its own economic rape and plunder. Demanding that a desperate, war-ravaged country sign over half of its revenues from critical minerals and rare-earth metals in perpetuity is a shakedown that would make even a mob boss blush.

Perhaps this is why Merz has gone where angels fear to tread, insisting that Europe will need to find a way to move from total dependence on the US to some sort of independence.

At my think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, we have launched a European Security Initiative to explore what this might look like. Before Trump’s election victory, we talked about how we can defend Europe with less America. But Europeans are increasingly wondering how to defend themselves from America.

Merz seems to be clear-eyed about the fact that becoming the leader Europe needs doesn’t just mean recasting Germany’s relationships with France and Poland, but also working out a completely different relationship with Britain. Once British Prime Minister Keir Starmer returns from what will surely be an intensely frustrating first trip to Washington, he might see things this way as well.

But, to have any chance of success, Merz will also have to overcome the self-harm of German economic ultra-orthodoxy. Scrapping the constitutional debt brake, introduced by his predecessor and party colleague, Angela Merkel, is necessary not just to enable Europe to rearm but also to finance urgently needed investment in infrastructure, renewables and digitalisation.

Merz has been adamant that mainstream parties in Europe need to rethink their approach to immigration. But he has been much less clear about how to do that in a way that reflects Europe’s demographic challenges. Ultimately, what is needed is a set of policies that re-establishes control over borders and population flows, limits the negative impact of those flows on the most vulnerable members of society and simultaneously considers the workforce necessary for economic growth, innovation and public services.

Looking at green policy and the environment, the question for Germany and Europe will be how to avoid a zero-sum trade-off between reducing emissions and reducing prices. The only answer is to create an environmental policy which is also an industrial policy.

But how? A fundamental question behind all these issues, from immigration and the green transition to trade and defence, is how to make interdependence less risky. How do you give people who have been left behind the sense that the government will keep them safe in a dangerous world, without walling ourselves off?

The independence Merz is promising will force Europe to rethink many of its relationships, including with China, Israel, India and, of course, the US. And we will need a political class that is able to see things clearly and make radical changes. Merz will not be alone in leading Germany to a new consensus. He will almost certainly need to lead a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), which may actually help him to bring his party to a different place—especially on the debt brake. Germany’s coalitions have often been a source of government weakness, but in this case a grand coalition of the main centre-right and centre-left parties could be a source of strength.

Merz is an unlikely candidate for this shift. His main critique of Merkel when they were both vying for the Christian Democratic Union’s leadership was that she had strayed dangerously far from the party’s orthodoxy. But just as it took an SPD chancellor, the outgoing Olaf Scholz, to start increasing defence investment and cut the country’s ties with Russia, Merz, the uber-Atlanticist and fiscal conservative, might be the only German politician who can credibly bury the debt brake and pave the way for a truly independent Europe.