BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government is moving to turn the country’s foreign intelligence agency into a more potent weapon to counter mounting threats from adversaries including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ministers in the chancellor’s cabinet adopted the intelligence reform on Wednesday, marking a major step forward in long-running plans to strengthen the country’s intelligence agencies by giving its spies vast new powers.

Under the proposed reform, spies working for Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, could carry out acts of sabotage, conduct offensive cyber operations and pursue more aggressive espionage operations. Until now, those spies have been limited to information-gathering operations due to intentional restraints put in place after World War II to prevent a repeat of the abuses perpetrated by the Nazi spy apparatus.

But with the threat of sabotage and influence operations from Russia growing — and concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump could halt or leverage the intelligence sharing Germany heavily relies on — Merz’s government has moved to push through a historic strengthening of the country’s foreign intelligence apparatus.

“We are daily targets of espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks and covert actions by foreign powers aimed at destabilizing Germany, at harming our country and at bringing about political and social changes within our country,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters after the cabinet meeting in Berlin.

“Our mission is to continually adapt the state’s protective mandate to these new threat scenarios,” he added.

The reforms must still be passed by both chambers of parliament before going into effect by 2027.

Nina Warken, the chancellery chief overseeing the BND reforms, suggested Germany can no longer afford to rely so heavily on foreign allies for sophisticated intelligence operations it has long been unable conduct itself.

“So far — and this must be stated objectively — we have relied too heavily in too many security-related areas on our partners to help ensure our security,” Warken said. “In short, we are simply too dependent on the support of other countries’ intelligence services. And in too many areas, this assistance is a one-way street.”

Germany’s postwar foreign intelligence service was founded in 1956 with far more legal constraints than intelligence agencies elsewhere. Those restraints have had the side effect of making Germany particularly dependent on the U.S. for intelligence gathering.

In view of the growing threat from Russia, leading politicians now argue that it is time for Germany’s spies to be given the ability to hit back harder. That argument took on new urgency following the sighting of an explosive-laden drone at Leipzig-Halle Airport in eastern Germany last week that was found near a Ukrainian Antonov plane used to transport munitions.

Dobrindt, in remarks after the incident, stopped short of naming Russia as responsible for the drone incursion, but said that “a hybrid threat is evident” and that such perils do not originate from amateurs but are “often linked to foreign powers.” On Wednesday, he said results of an investigation into the drone incident were still pending.

Germany’s security “worsened significantly” in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by the country’s domestic intelligence agency last year.

Germany’s intelligence reform would allow authorities to actively respond to hybrid threats such as the Leipzig drone incident. Measures could range from exposing those involved or destroying their property to sabotaging explosives before an attack or feeding adversaries false intelligence afterward, according to the proposed reform. Any response would have to be directly linked to the original incident and could not endanger life or physical safety.

“We are expanding the technical capabilities of the intelligence services and granting them active, operational powers,” Dobrindt said. “This is not just about enabling the services to see and hear better in the future and analyze information more quickly. Above all, it is about being able to take active measures against our attackers and adversaries.”

The BND will also face fewer data-protection restrictions, allowing it to make greater use of tools such as AI and facial recognition and to store data for longer periods of time, according to the proposed reform. The agency is also set to receive more funding in the coming years. Merz’s government increased the agency’s budget by about 26 percent to €1.51 billion this year.

BERLIN — German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has suggested a state actor was behind the explosive-laden drone that was found at Leipzig airport.

“We can’t rule out the possibility that foreign powers are behind this,” Dobrindt told public broadcaster ZDF Wednesday evening. “That will now be part of the investigation, but there are many indications pointing in that direction,” he said.

Dobrindt stopped short of naming Russia specifically in his statements but said that “a hybrid threat is evident” and that such threats do not originate from amateurs but are “often linked to foreign powers.”

“Of course, we all want to know which foreign powers are involved. But it would be reckless to give credence to any kind of speculation at this point,” he added.

Leipzig Airport serves as a strategic hub for NATO, including for military transports to Ukraine. The airport is also international courier service DHL’s largest European air hub and serves as a temporary home for some Ukrainian Antonov aircraft, protecting them from Russian attacks. The armed drone was found just meters away from such a plane, said officials Wednesday.

Armin Schuster, minister of the interior for Saxony — where Leipzig is located — told ZDF that the incident represented a new threat level.

“Without wanting to preempt the investigation, I would describe this as a suspected attack scenario because this is the first time we’ve had a drone that was also loaded with explosives,” he said. “That’s new.”

An airport worker found the drone Tuesday night. Officers disarmed the device by removing its detonator, which had failed to go off. In a separate incident at the same airport,  another flying object struck a DHL cargo aircraft as it was being diverted away from the airport after the explosive-laden drone was found.

Twenty-two EU leaders — including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — on Saturday took aim at Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s migration policies for undermining the security of the bloc’s borders.

The increasingly isolated Sánchez hit back that his EU partners were responding in a “selfish” and “unlawful” manner to the sudden influx of some 50,000 unauthorized migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in North Africa.

While almost all those migrants have now returned to Morocco — and none crossed into the EU mainland — the 22 leaders raised “serious concern” over the threat to the EU’s frontier, and zeroed in on Sánchez’s move to grant legal status to up to 1.2 million unauthorized migrants as a “pull factor” that fueled the crisis.

In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, the 22 leaders made direct reference to the need for EU-level cooperation on policies such as Madrid’s migrant regularization scheme.

“We have a duty to effectively deter and relentlessly combat illegal migration, by coordinating our action, strengthening our external borders and addressing all policies that can serve as pull factors, such as the regularization of [a] very large number of irregular migrants,” the leaders wrote.

Madrid has pushed back against the claim that the country’s regularization scheme triggered the crisis in Ceuta, and has pointed out that none of the people who illegally entered the exclave would be eligible to benefit from the measure.

“This process is based on very specific conditions, such as proof of residency in Spain before January 1, 2026, and having resided in Spain for five consecutive months at the time of application,” said a spokesperson for the Spanish foreign ministry. Moreover, the deadline for filing applications for the scheme, which was launched in April, was in June.

But those explanations have not appeared to sway the EU leaders who signed the letter to Costa, Von der Leyen and Martin.

“We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalisation of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible. That a migrant’s illegal entry can turn into legal stay,” they went on.

In a sign of the increasing threat to the EU’s Schengen open travel area and the explosiveness of migration as a pan-European political issue, the letter’s signatories said they were ready to reinforce or reintroduce “temporary border controls” in the bloc.

In addition to Merz and Meloni, the letter was signed by the leaders of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.

They called for a video conference of interior ministers to agree on next steps. Ireland said it would convene a meeting of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council on Tuesday.

Rome and Copenhagen took the initiative in drafting the letter.

Sánchez slams ‘selfish’ counterparts

In his own letter to von der Leyen, Costa and Martin, Sánchez slammed his European counterparts who “have chosen to attack Spain and to call for its temporary exclusion from the Schengen Area.”

Italy’s Meloni on Thursday was the first to propose Spain be suspended from the 29-country zone where internal border controls have largely been abolished. Italy on Friday imposed restrictions on free movement from Spain to Italian ports and airports. France has also increased checks on the border with Spain because of the migration surge in Ceuta.

In his letter, seen by POLITICO, Spain’s Socialist prime minister argued that calls to have Spain kicked out of the Schengen zone are “not only contrary to European law, humanitarian law, and the principles of solidarity that bind us together,” but also “Europe’s long-term interests and to the most basic common sense.”

Sánchez defended himself from accusations that Spain was failing to protect the EU’s external borders, and cited data showing that his country had recorded half as many illegal entries as Italy between 2021 and 2026. He also stressed that it was not the first time that migrants had been weaponized against the bloc’s members, and recalled Belarus’ 2021 bid to sow chaos in the EU by facilitating migrant crossings into Poland and several Baltic countries.

Spain’s prime minister added the EU members that had backed the suspension proposal were “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest.”

“In the current international context, the European Union cannot afford this kind of selfish, polarising and unlawful reaction,” he wrote.

Sánchez’s strongly worded letter underscores the growing tension between the prime minister and the plethora of EU leaders that have expressed support for Spain’s temporary exclusion from the Schengen area.

Those calling for action include right-wing politicians such as Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, a member of the nationalist Finns Party, as well as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, whose Social Democrats belong to the center-left Party of European Socialists.

Nicholas Vinocur, Zoya Sheftalovich and Sebastian Starcevic contributed reporting.