Germany's Bundeswehr falls short on funding to cover basic expenses
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German newspaper Bild reports that Germany's armed forces are facing a shortage of around $5.5 billion in spending budget.
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A sign of the German Armed Forces Bundeswehr career center is pictured in Stuttgart, southwestern Germany, on August 2, 2023, during a visit of the German defense minister. (AFP)
Germany's Bundeswehr is facing a deficit between 4.5 billion to 6 billion euros ($4.9-$6.5 billion) in the 2025 Army budget, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned on Saturday, according to Germany's Bild newspaper.
Berlin has been declaring goals to modernize its military for the past two years, since the Russian-Ukrainian war started, yet it has failed to meet any funding objectives.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in February 2022 a drastic change in the country's defense and security policies, or a "Zeitenwende" (sea change), as per his expression. This came shortly after he said the government will establish a special budget of 100 billion euros for the military.
Germany's Finance Ministry allocated earlier 52 billion euros in defense spending for 2025, but the amount will only be covering baseline expenditures such as operational costs, salaries of service members, as well as repairing equipment, among other basic needs. Only 500 million euros will remain to invest in developing new weapons, the newspaper reported.
Additionally, the budget remains below the 2% GDP spending goal required by NATO, despite the defense minister saying last January that Germany would be meeting the target in 2024 for the first time in nearly three decades.
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Also, a 5 billion euro Bundeswehr project to deploy some 5,000 combat-ready troops in Lithuania with their families by 2027 remains uncertain, as no budget has been allocated for it yet, the Bild added.
In March last year, the representative of the German army in parliament, Eva Hoegl, warned that the military "lacks everything", slamming Scholz for unfulfilling his promise to replenish the Bundeswehr's arms stocks that he handed over to Ukraine.
"Personal equipment such as helmets, backpacks, protective vests, as well as small and large equipment - from radios, ammunition, to tanks .. the Bundeswehr has too little of almost everything," Hoegl said then.
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