and finance minister old off scholtz plans to cut it back to one point two three percent of g.d.p. by two thousand and twenty three far below nato's invision goal of two percent. chancellor merkel is still counting on one and a half percent until two thousand and twenty four. for us to fulfill their stated all the occasion i stand behind that and so does the german government. can the nato partners rely on germany. this year german foreign minister. said nato is about decency and dependability and not just cash in contributions to a dependability is important that more and more of germany's allies are beginning to doubt that germany is a reliable act what's your take on a lot they're not wrong i mean i'm not sure they're right but they're not wrong and this goes back you have to understand this is not about trump this goes back several administrations. defense secretary gates in the w. bush administration came out strongly criticizing the germans they've just been more diplomatic and that's just the americans but the other partners as well and germany clearly has. thanks to this it

getting together and then somehow miraculously being way better off and also better for industries scholtz just said among other things today that german industry still needs a competitive german banks to accompany german industry abroad that's basically what he'd been saying before but you know from all of the people that you're here you hear almost a collective sigh of relief one advocate for shareholders right saying not surprised but very relieved others saying like a representative of the green party the financial a spokeswoman saying she never saw the sense in creating an even bigger bank with even bigger risks briefly if you can what's next for both banks. well they have to go at it alone and the way everybody sees it they don't have a different plan b. than before the talks started though it sure has to see that it upsets profit with its current business model which has not been that great in creating profit in the past years the same for kamau spunk amounts from could be gobbled up by someone but at the moment or with that with the kind of profit objectives and outlook that it has

as terry scholtz is covering that story for us and she joins us now from brussels so terry we just heard quite a lot of applause there for the nato secretary general speech to congress so how does that contributed to the mood for today's meeting and commemorations. i think that this first groundbreaking speech by a nato secretary general to both houses of congress probably set the meeting on a really confident and buoyant mood it was the best speech i've ever seen young stolzenberg given i've seen plenty of those he was extremely dynamic he was human he was emotional and of course he was in a friendly crowd everyone knows that congress is very much a supporter of nato a counterbalance to the trump white house which says disparaging things at least by tweet about nato so he was very comfortable and that will lead the twenty nine allies into a meeting and in a very good mood today this is something that it's really necessary because a big part of diplomacy is simply the on the aunts that they can create around the alliance and being in in washington of course they're on you know perhaps wa

that goes against the grain and i think the germans are now wrong as merkel and her finance minister scholtz as they like to do is to split hairs over how whether a percentage of g.d.p. is a good figure or not you know that would suggest you get a recession if you so many make this right you don't want them to do is become an incredibly important symbolic debate where the actual money is willing to pull its weight it's not just symbolic i mean number one i think it chip eve relatively clear that germany needs to invest more in its military simply in terms of capabilities as was mentioned there are so many systems that do not work we haven't we don't have as many people in uniform as we would like to so i think there's first of all a need for more investment that needs to be fulfilled but the second point of course is the dependability and i travel a lot you know within europe i go to paris they go to walsall and i don't think berlin realizes to what extent it has lost really the trust all they have cooler and i want you were. further you mean the berlin political analyst leadership there is