The “hole” in the German defense budget in 2025 will amount to around €6 billion, as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius informed other members of the government, Bild newspaper reported on March 10.
The publication published information that next year the Bundeswehr will be short about 6 billion euros, and even the achievement of NATO’s military spending target of 2% of GDP may be in doubt.
According to Bild, the German Ministry of Finance, under the direction of Christian Lindner, foresees military expenditures of 52 billion euros by 2025. Experts from the Ministry of Defense did their calculations and came to the conclusion that to achieve the goal of NATO 2% of GDP next year, allocations for military needs must increase between 4.5 and 6 billion euros.
Despite the fact that the number of Ministry of Defense projects for the implementation of which there are insufficient funds is constantly increasing, which increases the “hole” in the budget of the German Ministry of Defense.
At the moment it is known that the reconstruction of the Büchel airfield for the F-35 fighters will require an additional 700 million euros, as well as the purchase of new armored personnel carriers and Eurofighter aircraft. The deployment of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania is estimated at at least 5 billion euros and has not yet been taken into account in budget planning.
It is also known that the German Ministry of Defense is negotiating with the Ministry of Finance for additional financing, but so far without success. According to Bild, even without the aforementioned needs, the budget for 2025 will have a deficit of 25 billion euros. Lindner proposed financing the army’s needs by cutting some social spending, but Scholz made it clear that NATO’s target of 2% of GDP should be achieved without cutting social payments.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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