'Madness:' Germany's The Left slams Merz over military build-up

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's plans to make the German military the largest in Europe are "complete madness," newly re-elected The Left leader Ines Schwerdtner said on Sunday at the far-left party's annual conference.

"This is complete madness, and we must oppose it," Schwerdtner told delegates in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Schwerdtner lashed out at Washington for the Iran war and its economic blockade of Cuba, saying her party has stood by those resisting US imperialism for decades.

She further called for international alliances with communist and leftist sister-parties. 

"Our class struggle must be international, and so I tell you: Long live international solidarity," she said.

The Left, a successor to the Socialist Unity Party that governed communist East Germany, has made an impressive comeback in national politics in recent years and is polling well above 10%. 

Schwerdtner was re-elected on Saturday as co-leader alongside Luigi Pantisano, who secured just 53% of the vote and acknowledged that he needed to grow into the role.

Looking ahead to key regional elections in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and in Berlin in September, Pantisano pledged to increase protests against the social reforms of Merz's coalition government.

He accused the coalition, made up of Merz's conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats, of attacks on the lives of all, and rejected reforms proposed by a government-appointed pensions commission.

"I will do everything, along with Ines here, to organize the resistance," he said.