German military experts are warning that in the event of an attack on Germany, the country may defend itself for a few days. The decades of fiscal austerity are the subject of debate before the federal election in the country’s army, Bundesvehar, and now Germany’s defense budget.
How much money does the country need to maintain a well -equipped army? And looking at the Arab-Euros in Germany’s federal budget, where will it come from?
Center-Left Social Democratic Party (SPD) Chancellor Olaf Scools believes that Bundesvehar is slowly coming back to his policies on his feet thank. Immediately after the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Sholaz released € 100 billion ($ 103.8 BN) in additional funds to Bundesvehar from a debt-funded special fund.
Scools say that the special fund has been “a big success” and this course wants to continue. On the campaign mark, he is promising further military investment. However, as some parties are making the same promise, Sholaz is emphasizing that their party will not discover it by cutting social benefits.
So how much money will Bundesvehar really need in the coming years? In 2024, what is Germany’s defense budget under € 52 trillion. About 20 billion was connected to special funds. The government spent additional, discovered as military aid for Ukraine.
Overall, Germany informed NATO that it spent € 90.6 billion on defense in 2024. With this, Germany achieved important targets: spending the list of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense at 2%. Over the years, it had regularly failed to reach that target.
The German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius (SPD) says that the special funds will be fully constituted by the end of 2025. Monies will be paid from the end of 2027 and will be spent on BES: F -35A stealth fighter jet aircraft; Combat of helicopters; Pedestrian fighting vehicles; Sea reconnaissance aircraft; Frigates and Patriot missile defense systems – ie on many expensive arms systems.
Special funds are in high demand, not at least because Bundesvehar donated a lot of equipment to Ukraine. Pistorius states that weapons-on-overs should make Bundesvehar “fit” and stop Russia from attacking the NATO region.
2025: € 80 billion for defense?
It is still not clear that it has been fully allocated by batting at a particularly found particularly found. It is happy before the upcoming 23 February elections. A budget for 2025 has not yet been approved for 2025 due to the collapse of the coalition government in November 2024. The total of € 53.25 for Bundesvehar in the draft budget was € 53.25 – € 1.2 billion in 2024 € 1.2 billion.
The Defense Minister Pistorius had made a lot of demand, but was invincible to convince the then cabinet. If Germany wants to get 2% of GDP defense spending in the medium period, it will have to budget more than € 28 to € 30 billion each year.
The conservative block of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) agrees with these estimates. CDU/CSU Chancellor candidate, Frederick Merz spoke at Berlin’s Federal Academy for Security Policy in early December, stating that Bundesvehar would need “lease € 80 billion” in future. So he so said: “It wants to end, and will not be possible with new budgetary priorities.”
However, Merz does not want to finance through that finance. In addition, he emphasized that his party “NATO’s 2% target is as lower low range, not up to the upper limit.”
While almost no US President in Germany shares the view of Donald Trump that every NATO member will have to spend 5% of his economic output on rescue, Bundesvehar is playing a more prominent role in a very lower election campaign in Germany. . It seems as if politicians are competing to announce the highest budget figures for defense.
The Economy Minister Robert Habec, the top candidate of the Green Party, believe that it is necessary to spend about 3.5% of GDP on defense over the next fee years. For the electoral manifesto of the greens, funding should not come from the current budget, but “during the medium period because during the entire loan.”
During the cold, Germany regularly spent comparative large amount on defense. On average, 3% of GDP was spent on tanks, fighter jets and a coarse network of barracks.
In 1963, defense spending reached 4.9% of GDP. Given the status of today’s budget, the amount looks unrealistic. However, one thing is clear: a glued point in coalition talks is certain how to finance Bundesvehar.
This article was original in German.
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