![]() ![]() The government did not reply to requests for comment on such problems. "That means it will have taken (Germany) 10 years to procure a helmet that is available on the market and that has been in use in the United States," she said. forces since the 1990s, said Eva Hoegl, the German Bundestag's Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces. The political establishment focused on trade and engagement, to the point where the country came to depend on Russia for half its natural gas supply.Īt home, the military has battled red tape so convoluted that it is still waiting for helmets it requested in 2013, of a type which has been in use by the U.S. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germans felt "surrounded by friends," a foreign minister said in 1997. In the wake of two world wars Germany has shied away from confrontation. This is a change in mentality which the Germans have to adapt to first," said Strack-Zimmermann, whose Free Democrats (FDP) are junior partners in Scholz's three-way coalition. "That we are asked to show military leadership now. was meant to never again become a military power," Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the head of parliament's defence committee, told Reuters. That would make Germany the world's third biggest military spender behind the United States and China, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).īut its parliament has yet to pass the special fund. ![]() At home, it aims to use the special fund to boost defence spending over 4-5 years, bringing it to the 2% of economic output mandated by NATO. Since promising the Gepard tanks, Berlin has pledged more heavy weapons to Ukraine. Germany's government did not respond to a query about why not. The plan was not included in the December 2021 coalition treaty. ![]() That document, classified as confidential and seen by Reuters, said the army, the Bundeswehr, would need some 102 billion euros to guarantee funding for major defence projects by 2030, and proposed a special fund outside the normal budget. But rather than a spontaneous response to the Ukraine invasion, defence sources told Reuters this plan was actually picking up on a defence ministry proposal drawn up months earlier, for talks to form his coalition. ![]()
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