German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has claimed Berlin needs to ramp up defense spending to stand up to Russia
Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz has sharply criticized a recent proposal by Economy Minister Robert Habeck to double the nation’s defense spending in order to contain Russia.
According to Scholz, the idea was poorly thought through and would end up as nothing but an additional burden for German citizens.
Habeck, who is also the Green Party’s chancellor candidate in the upcoming snap elections in February, urged a major increase in defense spending in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine last week.
Berlin needs to spend 3.5% of the national GDP on defense, he said in it. The figure exceeds the NATO members’ target spending, which currently stands at 2% of a nation’s GDP.
The economy minister justified his demand by pointing to a threat supposedly posed by Moscow. “We need to spend almost twice as much on our defense so that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin does not dare to attack us. We must secure peace and prevent further war,” Habeck told Der Spiegel.
Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia has no plans to attack any member of the US-led military bloc. He nonetheless warned NATO of a potential risk of a direct confrontation with Moscow due to the bloc’s ever-increasing involvement in the ongoing Ukraine conflict, where its members provided financial and military aid to Kiev, including supplying it with long-range weapons the Ukrainian forces used to strike Russia’s internationally recognized territory.
Talking to Stern magazine on Tuesday, Scholz criticized Habeck’s proposal as too vague. “The idea seems somewhat half-baked to me,” he said, adding that the economy minister essentially suggested “almost doubling the defense budget from just under €80 billion ($82.76 billion) to €140 billion ($144.83 billion) without saying what the money will be spent on and where it will come from.”
“Who will pay the bill? The citizens?” the chancellor asked. According to the NATO data, cited by the German dpa news agency last week, Germany reported defense spending amounting to €90.6 billion ($93.3 billion) for the coming year. That is slightly above its 2% of GDP spending threshold.
The target has been met with the help of a €100 billion special debt-financed fund created by Scholz’s government back in 2022, in the wake of the start of Russia’s military campaign against Kiev, dpa reported. According to the news agency, the fund is to be spent by the end of 2027.
Germany is also one of the biggest donors of military aid to Kiev, second only to the US. Berlin has spent around €11 billion ($11.38 billion) between January 2022 and October 2024 on military assistance to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
