German opposition leader Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday he was open to reforming the country’s constitutional brake on government spending. Merz, widely seen as the favourite to succeed Chancellor Olaf Scholz after next year’s parliamentary elections, said that only the first 20 articles in the Basic Law, Germany’s constitution, are unchangeable. “Everything else can of course be discussed,” said Merz at an economic conference organized by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Berlin. There are 146 articles in the German constitution. The debt brake – a fiscal rule restricting the German gove…