Berlin The election of Boris Pistorius as the new defense minister has met with approval in the federal cabinet. Finance Minister Christian Lindner congratulated the Lower Saxony domestic politician on his new post. In a tweet on Tuesday, the FDP leader spoke of his “new cabinet colleague Boris Pistorius”.
“A major task lies ahead of us, especially with the implementation of the special fund,” he wrote. He is looking forward to good cooperation between the finance and defense ministries.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) sees the future Minister of Defense as suitable for the new office. “Boris Pistorius is a very experienced politician who has the necessary nerves of steel in difficult situations,” the Vice Chancellor said in a statement on Tuesday.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
He had always experienced Pistorius as binding and reliable. The future defense minister will take office at very crucial times, stressed Habeck with a view to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The signs for security and defense policy have changed. There are also important decisions to be made at short notice.
The decision is also welcomed within the SPD. Vice President of the European Parliament Katarina Barley said on Twitter: “The Bundeswehr deserves this and our country needs it in these difficult times.” Pistorius was “one of our best”.
The SPD foreign politician Ralf Stegner wrote on Twitter that Pistorius had shown what he could do in his previous responsibility as Lower Saxony’s interior minister for many years. “From many years of working together, I know that safety is in the very best hands with him.”
Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) sees Pistorius well prepared for his new role as Federal Defense Minister. “Boris Pistorius has always had a very good and close relationship with the military and the soldiers in Lower Saxony, one of the largest Bundeswehr bases in Germany,” Weil said in a written statement on Tuesday.
Pistorius is considered a domestic hardliner. In 2017, the SPD politician presented a paper on social democratic domestic policy, in which he envisaged, among other things, decisive action against terrorist threats, a significant increase in the number of staff in the federal police force and improved combating of cybercrime.
The lawyer Pistorius has no experience with the Bundeswehr, apart from his military service in the early 1980s.
Criticism from the CDU
The deputy chairman of the Union faction, Johann Wadephul (CDU), is therefore critical of Chancellor Scholz’s decision. “The Chancellor is showing that he does not take his own turning point seriously,” he told the German Press Agency. “Again, expertise and experience with the Bundeswehr play no role.”
Wadephul criticized the personnel as a “cast from the B team”. With that, Chancellor Scholz managed to “create a real surprise. Unfortunately not a good one.”
CSU regional group chief Alexander Dobrindt emphasized that Pistorius had to quickly tackle the project that was left behind by his predecessor. “We have to make up for lost time,” said Dobrindt. The future defense minister must implement the 100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr immediately. Pistorius is taking on a challenging task, for which the CSU wishes him success.
One of the first measures must be a “repair offensive” for the Leopard I and II battle tanks, said the head of the 45 CSU members of the Bundestag. Pistorius must also immediately order missing ammunition and create the planned advisory body for the special fund for the Bundeswehr.
Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht resigns
Pistorius was repeatedly said to have ambitions for a political office at the federal level. For example, there were rumors that he could become federal interior minister if Nancy Faeser were to run as the top candidate for the SPD in the state elections in Hesse.
With the decision for Pistorius, Scholz undermines his own claim to fill his ministerial team equally. Previously there were eight men and eight women, now there will be nine men and seven women – not counting the chancellor himself.
More: The biggest construction sites for the new leadership in the Ministry of Defense