Germany news: Merz urges CDU discipline as pressure grows

Here is a roundup of top stories from and about Germany on Monday, September 14, 2026:

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius will order compulsory troop deployments in Lithuania.

According to the Defense Ministry, this is intended to fill gaps in the German armoured brigade's complement.

Several hundred military personnel would be affected, with the shortages in logisticians and IT specialists being the main reason for the move.

The ministry said that 80% of the Lithuanian brigade's positions are filled with volunteers.

"The principle of voluntariness remains unchanged as our guiding principle," the ministry said.

German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil held a meeting with the CEO of UniCredit to discuss the future of Commerzbank .

This comes as the German bank's takeover by Italian lender UniCredit edges closer.

After the meeting, Klingbeil said it is "paramount" for the German government that Commerzbank continues to "fulfil its vital role in financing the German economy."

"We expect Commerzbank to remain a listed company headquartered in Frankfurt and to continue its strong focus on financing small and medium-sized businesses," the Social Democratic politician said in a statement.

UniCredit is close to sealing one of Europe's biggest mergers of banks in recent years with it increasing its stake in Commerzbank to nearly 50 percent.

A Catholic priest from North Rhine-Westphalia has received a suspended 14-month jail sentence after being found guilty of possessing of some 24,000 data files containing images and footage of sexual abuse of children and youths.

The district court in Waldbröl, a rural area to the east of Cologne and Bonn in the Westerwald forest, found the man guilty on Monday.

The defendant had pleaded guilty to all charges, leading to a comparatively quick court process.

As well as the suspended sentence, the man was ordered to pay €10,000 (roughly $11,500) to a local facility providing advice and counsel to those affected by sexualized, psychological and physical abuse.

He was also ordered to complete a therapy course that he had already begun.

The Cologne diocese , of which Waldbröl is a part, had already suspended the priest from various activities after the allegations became public knowledge. Among other things he was stopped from working with minors.

He's also subject to church disciplinary proceedings. These had been put on hold pending the outcome of the court case.

Police on duty in Kaiserslautern had a more colorful callout than they might have bargained for over the weekend.

Police said on Monday that early on Saturday evening, they had received calls from residents displeased by a man painting a facade in his driveway.

They took exception to the fact that their neighbor was "wearing just his shoes," as police put it, during his travails.

"After officers brought to his attention that he was creating a disturbance in the community with his actions, the 64-year-old became intransigent," police said.

"Only after an explicit order did he put some trousers on. He was told that his behavior constituted a breach of the peace and that he should reckon with a criminal complaint."

Prices for drivers at German filling stations hit the highest levels on record for gasoline on Sunday, while diesel was just shy of April's record prices.

The nationwide average for the cheapest E10 unleaded variant hit €2.27 per liter on Sunday. That equates to roughly $9.92 per US gallon.

Diesel was slightly shy of its record level but still rose to €2.40 per liter, or $10.48 per US gallon.

Germany's largest motoring club the ADAC said that "given the still-rising oil prices it can be assumed that slight increases in the daily average prices for Super E10 and diesel will emerge" on Monday.

Prices for gasoline and diesel have risen quite sharply in September, and more generally since the German government's temporary tax relief introduced in response to the war in Iran expired at the end of June.

Developments in the Gulf have been driving the price upwards, despite claims to the contrary from under-fire US President Donald Trump on Monday.

The ADAC, which is frequently critical of the country's fuel providers and their pricing policies, argued that geopolitics alone still did not explain the latest hikes.

"In the view of the ADAC, the oil price and the euro-dollar exchange rate only partly explain the current price levels at the petrol pumps," the ADAC wrote. "What's particularly noticeable is how Super E10 keeps hitting new record highs, even though crude oil prices are far adrift of their previous highs. For consumers this development is difficult to explain."

The ADAC called on refining and fuel selling companies to be more transparent in their pricing practices.

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A light aircraft crashed in a field in Erkelenz in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Monday.

Police in nearby Heinsberg said three people were killed in the crash; nobody on board the small Cessna survived.

Police said the crash happened before noon in a rural area south of Mönchengladbach and that they were still working to identify the victims.

Firefighters and police were at the scene on Monday. The German body responsible to investigating air traffic accidents had started an invesigation, which police said was liable to take some time.

Senior figures in the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) have expressed growing concern about the turmoil inside Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

They also made clear that their party's participation in the coalition is not dependent on Merz's remaining chancellor.

SPD parliamentary manager Dirk Wiese said there was an impression that "nerves are a little frayed within the CDU" and urged the coalition partner to regain its focus and move ahead with reforms agreed by the government.