At a press conference in the Bundestag, Germany's conservative CDU party leader Friedrich Merz says that reforming the debt brake "in the near future is out of the question". Only hours after his party's election win Sunday, Merz said his "absolute priority" would be to strengthen European security as US President Donald Trump had shown indifference to the continent's fate. The chancellor-in-waiting will however have to find a way to work within Germany's budgetary straitjacket -- which limits new borrowing to 0.35 percent of GDP -- or find a way to escape it. IMAGES