By Andreas Rinke
BONN, Germany (Reuters) -Germany’s federal government will begin helping municipalities to pay down old debts from January 1, 2026, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Saturday, two weeks before his government faces its first electoral test since taking office.
Merz made the pledge at the party conference of his Christian Democrats, or CDU, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia which is holding local elections on September 14, four months after his government came into power.
State and municipal leaders say the federal government has imposed extra welfare costs on municipalities without providing them with the necessary funds to finance them.
In NRW, Germany’s most populous state and a bellwether for national…