Thuringia's Minister President Mario Voigt (CDU) has described the top-level meeting between the eastern states and Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as "very successful". The cooperation between the federal government, the Chancellor and the East German states was "really a new kind of togetherness", Voigt said on ARD's "Morgenmagazin".
At the first meeting of the East German minister presidents with Merz at Ettersburg Castle in Thuringia, it was agreed, among other things, that the "autumn of reform would also be an autumn of decision".