2024-07-08 23:24:38
The troops are surprised and shocked: In the budget approved by the traffic light coalition, the defense budget is only to grow by 1.2 billion euros. Boris Pistorius is angry.
After the traffic light coalition leaders agreed on a draft budget, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius sharply criticized the small increases for the Bundeswehr. “Yes, I got significantly less than I registered for. That is annoying for me because I cannot then initiate certain things as quickly as the changing times and threat situation require,” said Pistorius, who attended the Arctic Defender 2024 exercise in Alaska and then wanted to travel on to the NATO summit in Washington DC.
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert hopes that the budget debate will come to an end, at least temporarily. “Concrete discussions about corrections to the budget will only make sense once the draft budget has been approved by the cabinet. That will be the case on July 17,” Kühnert told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. “At least until then, Berlin’s political establishment should treat itself and the people of the state to a little summer break.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) settled the budget dispute that had been simmering for months on Friday night and agreed on key points for the federal budget for 2025. The debt brake will be adhered to, and no budgetary emergency has been identified, for example due to spending on military and humanitarian support for Ukraine. This was important to the FDP and its Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
The defense budget, currently around 52 billion euros, is only to grow by around 1.2 billion euros. Pistorius had called for significantly more and an exemption for these expenses from the debt brake. There has been clear criticism of this, including from the traffic light coalition. Pistorius said of the draft budget: “We will see what happens in the coming weeks and months. I have to prepare for it and make the best of it.”
The German Armed Forces Association is also calling for significant improvements to the draft defense budget. An increase of 1.2 billion euros “does not do justice to the current threat situation and certainly not to Germany’s responsibility in the world,” said association chairman André Wüstner to the German Press Agency in Berlin.
He warned: “The federal government may want to use this budget to get through this legislative period, but the Bundeswehr, as an essential part of our security architecture – and thus all of us – will pay the price for it.”
Wüstner referred to political instability and uncertainty about the future role of the USA as a security guarantor for Europe, overall the “most dangerous security situation since the fall of the Iron Curtain”.
“The troops are astonished, mostly shocked. Especially after the Chancellor’s statement during the Munich Security Conference, ‘Without security, everything is nothing’, nobody would have expected the defense budget to be so underfunded,” complained Wüstner. “Despite the declaration of a turning point, unfortunately no realization has occurred.”
Everyone knows that the Bundeswehr’s so-called special assets are already completely tied up in contracts this year. “We also need the increase in the defense budget to cover the dramatically rising operating expenses – from power generators to fuel and special tool sets to personnel,” stressed Wüstner. Without further investment, the capacity building that has begun in the defense industry will quickly be stalled again.
He called for the parliamentary consideration of the budget: “In short: Parliament must make massive adjustments!” If Parliament does not make adjustments before the budget is approved, “then it will be a turning point – an end to the times!”