The German government, in a sudden reversal to decades of the country’s foreign policy, has announced a dramatic increase in military spending to €100 billion annually.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the increase in defence spending, in an extraordinary address to a special session of Parliament on Sunday, in a move seen as dramatically shifting the country’s policy which has long favored avoidance of conflict
Scholz said the Germany would commit 100 billion euros ($113 billion) to a special armed forces fund and pledged to keep its defense spending above NATO’s target of 2% of GDP.
The Chancellor also proposed enshrining that threshold in the country’s Constitution, ensuring that future governments would be obliged to maintain the defence spending. Mr. Scholz claimed Russian military action in the Ukraine had created a new reality.
“With the invasion of Ukraine, we are in a new era,” Scholz said. “President Putin created a new reality with his invasion of Ukraine. This new reality requires a clear response. We have given it.”
The German government also announced that it would send 1,000 shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets and 500 surface-to-air Stinger missiles to Ukraine, again overturning a policy not to send weapons to conflict zones.
The country also allowed the Dutch government to send Ukraine 400 German-made anti-tank weapons for use in combat in the conflict.
Scholz told legislators: “we are also doing this for us, for our own security, in the awareness that the Bundeswehr alone does not have the means to contain all future threats.”
He said that Germany needed to “keep pace with new technology”, and that an example was the need to “build the next generation of combat aircraft and tanks here in Europe together with European partners, and particularly France. These projects are our utmost priority.”