This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

Can Europe defend itself? The question is directed against and for and with Germany.

That is the engine of growth these many years, but it's gone away.

And there is reason to believe that the United States has other concerns right now, and therefore

Europe can it defend itself. I welcome Joseph Sternberg, a member of the editorial board of

the Wall Street Journal.

He's in London, and he writes the political economics column, asking that same question and filling in some details already underway.

We begin in Germany because of its strength these many decades of the EU and now.

Joseph, a very good evening to you.

The chancellor to be, Friedrich Merritt,

has made a decision,

and he's joined in that decision by Olaf Schultz,

the interim chancellor, former chancellor. And that is to do away with, to avoid to eliminate the debt break in order to lead again and grow again, and that connects to defense.

What is the debt break and what has been the limitations about what Germany can spend

on defense? Good evening to you. Hi, John. So what we're talking about here is basically

Germany's version of a balanced budget amendment. And I think that if we take a step back, the big

political problem that Germany has had trying to rearm really since February of 2022, when

Berlin was completely shocked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is that years ago they passed

into law, into their constitution, this balanced budget amendment, which severely limits the

government's ability to borrow, to fund itself each year and also, you know, is intended to cap the accumulation of new government debt. So that's why it's generally referred to as the debt break. But I mean, in essence, it's a balanced budget amendment. And the consequence of this is that as they have been debating rearming, because their budget already was maxed out, particularly on things like social welfare spending and various other green climate subsidies, it was going to be difficult for them to come up with money for defense if they couldn't

borrow because they were constrained by this constitutional debt break.

So the first solution that they tried in 2022 was outgoing Chancellor Olaf Schultz's special

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