Berlin The Bundeswehr is to receive a special fund of 100 billion euros for investments and armaments projects. The money will be provided with the federal budget for 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced on Sunday during a special session of the Bundestag. At the same time, he promised that “from now on, year after year, Germany will invest more than two percent of its gross domestic product in our defense”.
Due to the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Bundeswehr needs “new, strong capabilities”, said the Chancellor. “One thing is clear: we have to invest significantly more in the security of our country in order to protect our freedom and our democracy in this way.” The goal is an efficient, ultra-modern and progressive Bundeswehr.
He called on all parliamentary groups in the Bundestag to secure the special fund in the Basic Law. With this step, the federal government can allocate funds from the budget and dispose of them a bit more easily. For climate protection investments, for example, there is the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) as a special fund.
The appeal of the KTF is that the debt brake can be partially circumvented, which is expected to come into effect again next year. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had placed 60 billion euros of unused loans in the KTF in December. The federal government can now use this for the next few years without having to pay into the debt brake that will be in force again.
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However, the procedure is legally controversial, since the current suspension of the debt brake due to the pandemic according to the Basic Law only allows additional debt to offset the effects of the corona crisis. Scholz wants to anticipate such concerns about the special fund for armaments: In the Bundestag he announced that he wanted to enshrine it in the Basic Law.
Merz criticizes the plans
The time when the Bundeswehr was neglected must end, explained Finance Minister Lindner at the debate on Sunday. The day-to-day operations of the Bundeswehr will be financed and constantly increased directly from the budgets, while respecting the debt brake. “But you can’t finance a neglect that has lasted for at least 15 years from the current budget all of a sudden,” he said, explaining the plan for the additional special fund.
When anchored in the Basic Law, it would be made clear that the 100 billion euros could only be spent on repairing the Bundeswehr. However, a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and the approval of the federal states are required for a constitutional amendment.
The traffic light must therefore be set on the Union. Friedrich Merz, party and parliamentary group leader of the CDU, had already criticized the plans in the Bundestag before Lindner’s speech. The Federal Minister of Finance, in turn, appealed to Merz and the Union to agree to the plans: “We will not point fingers at each other.”
Lindner will probably have to say goodbye to his plan not to increase new debt in the current year because of the special fund. The previous federal government had set this at around 99 billion euros. For weeks, Lindner had emphasized that he did not want to shake things up, despite the steadily increasing requests of his cabinet colleagues and the downturn in the economy.
Differences to the motion of the parliamentary groups
Meanwhile, Scholz emphasized that the increase in defense spending to two percent of annual economic output was not only happening because it had been promised to the Allies. “We are also doing this for ourselves, for our own security.” The two percent is actually a commitment from all members of the NATO alliance. However, Germany has never reached the target since it was introduced in 2002. Above all, the US government had sharply criticized this in recent years.
With the 100 billion euros from the special fund, spread over the next four years, the two percent target can be achieved, wrote Hubertus Bardt, Managing Director at the German Economic Institute, on Twitter.
In a motion for a resolution drawn up independently of Scholz’s announcement, the factions of the traffic light coalition together with the Union faction have already called for increased financial efforts for the Bundeswehr in advance. The government is called upon to “further advance the modernization of the Bundeswehr with the aim of having a fully equipped and fully operational armed forces, to close existing capability gaps immediately and to provide the necessary financial resources for this in a timely manner and in the long term.” The application is available to the Handelsblatt. The NATO “capability targets” would have to be met and promptly invested in the Bundeswehr.
This is how the Handelsblatt reports on the developments in the Ukraine war:
However, there is no concrete commitment to the two percent target in the application. Scholz’ advance came as a surprise on Sunday on this point too. In circles of leading Green Party politicians, the prevailing opinion at the weekend was that significantly more should be invested in the military, but that two percent of economic output is not a goal worth striving for. The number alone does not say whether Germany can build a reasonable defense.
SPD faction leader Rolf Mützenich, who opposed higher military spending in the past few days, did not comment specifically on the special fund or the two percent target in his speech on Sunday. The defense budget has been increased in recent years and will continue to do so. “An efficient defense policy must not be limited to budget approaches,” said Mützenich.
The motion by the four parliamentary groups also states that it must be examined whether additional military equipment can be made available to Ukraine. The federal government approved the first arms deliveries to Ukraine on Saturday and thus completed a U-turn after years of exports to crisis areas being fundamentally ruled out.
1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 surface-to-air missiles are said to come from Bundeswehr stocks. There was talk in government circles of a “historic moment”.
More: Minister of Finance Lindner wants to upgrade the Bundeswehr