61st Munich Security Conference


The 61st Munich Security Conference was the annual meeting of the Munich Security Conference, that took place from 14 February to 16 February 2025 in Munich, Germany. A few days earlier the Munich Security Report had been published. Its title served as thematic framework for the conference: 'multipolarization' - A state of global reorganization between promising opportunities and endangered communality, especially in the management of crises and threats. According to the report, “depolarization” and substantial reforms of the international order are now needed more than ever. During the conference, a series of US statements at the conference sparked controversy and unrest among the attending European politicians. Key outcomes of the conference include further weakening of the transatlantic alliance, US attitude shift about the war in Ukraineand Europe in general, increased US pressure on Europe to further raise defence spending, calls by the US for Europe to further increase military aid to Ukraine, and discord between US and Europe on topics as diverse as election interference, trade, freedom of speech and democratic values.

Background

It was almost three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump had started his second presidency 25 days before the conference.
One day before the event, a car attack in Munich injured 36 people. The conference ran just over one week before the 2025 German federal election.

Attendees

Attendees of the conference included:
The conference was opened on 14 February 2025 by German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier. During the event, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US vice president JD Vance, while Vance also met with Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the far-right Alternative for Germany, and with opposition leader Friedrich Merz. Zelenskyy also had a meeting with several United States senators from both major US political parties.
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, said that European countries needed to come up with plans for Ukraine if they wished to play a major role in discussions on a peace settlement for the Russia–Ukraine war.
In 2025 [JD Vance speech at the Munich Security Conference|a speech], Vance said that illegal migration was the "most urgent" challenge faced by Europe. Vance also said that European leaders need to do more to contribute to Ukrainian defense as the US focuses more on China. Vance also claimed that European states were failing to uphold free speech and democratic values, criticizing the firewall against the far-right in Germany and the decision to cancel the results of the 2024 Romanian presidential election because of Russian interference in the 2024 Romanian presidential election|Russian interference] in the campaign. German defense minister Boris Pistorius rebuffed Vance's speech, saying,
Vance's speech was also criticised, among others, by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Natalia Pouzyreff, Opposition Leader and likely next Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, and Minister for Foreign Annalena Baerbock. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann ] called Vance's speech a "bizarre intellectual bottom".
Responses vary greatly, but include Scholz saying,
Scholz also said "the democratic parties in Germany 'have a common consensus' because of the experiences with national socialism: that consensus is the firewall against extreme right parties", stressing further that "the Federal Republic is a democracy, that created itself from the opposition against national socialism and against fascism", national socialism and their monstrous crimes have been trivialised from the ranks of the AfD as a speck of "birdshit in German history", "a commitment to 'never again', as Vance made during a visit to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site, cannot be reconciled with support for the AfD", and that Germans "decide their democracy for themselves."
Habeck noted that in the US "a new form of technological money-nobility" is currently emerging as a social class that needs German and European responses, and "what Vance did yesterday it must be said as clearly as this it's none of your business deal with your own stuff, there are enough challenges in the US." Merz criticised Vance's interference in the German election, rejected Vance's allegation of a value deficit in Europe saying that lawful regulation of hate speech and fake news by independent courts is absolutely appropriate, and pointed out that journalists would never be denied access to the chancellory in reference to Associated Press staff being denied access to the White House and Air Force One for their choice of speech around the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Zelenskyy called for the creation of a European army. Such an army is a prerequisite to Europe, which has more than twice the population of the US, developing its own nuclear umbrella. Currently that umbrella is contributed to NATO by the US as a deterrent, with Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey being nuclear sharing participants and France and the UK maintaining their own nuclear weapons. Loss of this umbrella would create a significant gap, and might lead to what it was in part created to prevent: proliferation of nuclear weapons and emergence of Europe as anything but an indivisible albeit junior partner of the US.