German defence minister in fierce row with Scholz over military spending
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
A bitter row has broken out between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his defence minister over spending limits on the armed forces, as Berlin struggles to keep up with its goal of becoming a “war-ready” nation.
Boris Pistorius is growing increasingly frustrated by Mr Scholz’s refusal to increase the 2025 defence budget by at least €6.5 billion, the German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Wednesday.
The German defence minister is also said to have made the frustrated comment “I don’t have to do that here”, at a breakfast meeting with members of Germany’s coalition government, in what appeared to be a veiled threat to step down – though sources close to Mr Pistorius deny this was his intention.
The trigger for the row was a newspaper comment piece written by Mr Pistorius, who has vowed to turn Germany into a “kriegswichtig [war-ready]” country in the face of threats from Russia, in which he called for the defence budget to be exempt from government debt limits.
Under the proposals, government funds on military and civil defence would be excluded from Germany’s famous “debt brake,” a strict rule introduced in 2016 to prevent overspending.
Mr Pistorius has argued that building a functional fighting force is a constitutional requirement in Germany, meaning it should not be affected by the debt brake.
But Mr Scholz publicly distanced himself from that view, telling German news outlet Stern that it was “time to sweat” in terms of financial planning. The comments did not directly address Mr Pistorius, but were widely viewed as a rebuke of the defence minister’s newspaper article.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Germany announced a €100 billion defence spending fund as part of its “Zeitenwende,” or turning of the times, policy.
Since then, however, Mr Scholz’s coalition has been mired in a government budget crisis and wider economic woes which have left the German finance ministry struggling to live up to that vision.
Mr Pistorius has said that he accepts that finding the extra funds will be difficult. But he also believes it is crucial to ensure that Germany becomes a leading security power in Europe, especially amid concerns that a direct war between Nato and Russia could erupt within five years.
“There will be no simple answer to the question of where all the money we need to close the gap will come from,” he said this week. “We are talking about additional requirements of €6.5 to €7 billion for the coming year. The additional requirement will continue to grow in the years after that.”
