Germany to increase military investment

Germany's government is to continue efforts toward the country's biggest rearmament in years by asking the parliamentary budget committee to sign off more than 50 billion euros ($58.6 billion) of military spending, the Financial Times newspaper reports.

The spending plans include money for vehicles, protective clothing and equipment, and satellite reconnaissance systems.

For years, the issue of German military strength was a highly sensitive topic in Europe, for obvious historical reasons, and as recently as just over a decade ago, Germany, the largest country in the European Union and its long-standing economic powerhouse, only devoted as little as 1 percent of its GDP to defense expenditure.

"Germany has a lot of historical (military) baggage," Aaron Allen, a researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Euronews website. "They want to be seen as responsible actors on the world stage and not as aggressors."

But according to Germany's international broadcasting service Deutsche Welle, or DW, military expenditure has been exempted from tight restrictions on public debt in the coming years, in a bid to redress those years of underinvestment.

In a speech following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, then-chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was a "watershed in the history of our continent … the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before".

He went on to say "it is clear that we must invest much more in the security of our country in order to protect our freedom and our democracy. This is a major national undertaking".

This policy has been continued by his successor, Friedrich Merz, who, shortly before taking office earlier this year, said: "In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the rule for our defense now has to be 'whatever it takes'."

DW said a 29-point list of desired purchases had been put to the budgetary committee by the country's armed forces, which included rockets for the Arrow 3 missile shield system, and a 1.76-billion-euro investment in satellite-based reconnaissance to support German forces in Lithuania.

Last month, Germany's national armaments director, Vice-Admiral Carsten Stawitzki, told delegates at a conference in Berlin: "In the end, I would like to defeat my enemy before he crosses my border."