Boris Pistorius hoped the new budget would allocate an additional €6 billion to the Bundeswehr in 2025, Die Welt daily reported on Monday.
But instead of being able to boast of a major boost to Berlin’s defense spending at the NATO 75th anniversary summit that will begin in Washington on Tuesday, Pistorius can only bring an additional €1.2 billion to the alliance’s overall military spending.
“I received significantly less than I declared [we need],” Pistorius said while visiting the Arctic Defender 2024 exercises in Alaska.
“It is annoying to me because certain things cannot be initiated with the speed that the
Zeitenwende [historic turning point] and the dangerous situation require,” he added, referring to a term used by Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a speech delivered on February 24, 2022, in reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In 2023, the Bundeswehr’s regular budget was set at €51.95 billion, supplemented with an additional €20 billion from a special fund established to keep defense spending at around 2% of GDP. This fund, however, will be exhausted in 2027.
The parties in Germany’s ruling coalition, the Socialists (SPD), the Greens, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), have argued over the 2025 budget for months, only reaching an agreement last week. It is expected that the government will approve the budget in mid-July. Then parliament will debate next year’s budget in mid-September, with it finally expected to be approved sometime in November or December.
Pistorius said: “We will see what more the following weeks and months will bring. I must prepare for it and make the best of it.”
Importance of deterring Russia
General Carsten Breuer, Germany’s chief of defense, expects a guaranteed, significant increase in military spending. Breuer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily in an interview published on Sunday: “A reliable, growing defense budget is indispensable to enable us to train, drill, and secure our ability to plan further indispensable investments.”
Germany’s defense chief also warned that Russia may also turn on NATO countries around 2029, adding to why this deterrence is so important.
Russia is building a military potential vastly exceeding what it would need to continue fighting in Ukraine.
“Russian armed forces plan to expand to 1.5 million troops, which is more than all of the EU has,” Breuer said.
