The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected the requests of the American official Donald Trump that Germany and other NATO allies accumulate defense expenses at least 5% of the gross domestic product (GDP).
“Five % would have more than two hundred billion euros ($ 204 billion) consisting of the year: the federal budget does not even constitute 500 billion euros,” said Scholz an occasion of Crusade in the city of German Bielefeld Western Western Bielefeld.
“This would only be imaginable with large tax increases or large cuts to many things that are vital for us,” he said, insisting that he would not decrease pensions, local government or shipping infrastructure.
Germany only reached the current NATO target of 2% of GDP last year, the first time it had done so since the end of the Cold War, and Scholz promised that the country would maintain that level.
“I guarantee that we will continue to spend 2% of our economic output on defense,” he said. “Anyone who says that’s not the way to go must also say where the [extra] money will come from.”
To view this video, turn on JavaScript and go to an internet browser that supports HTML5 video
During his remarkable speech of “Zeitenende” (historical turning point) in the German Parliament in February 2022, after the giant invasion of Ukraine scale through Russia, Scholz announced a special fund of one hundred billion euros for the Subfinancos and sub -financed and sub -financed. Financial Armed Forces of Germany, known as Bundeswehr.
But German defense spending remains limited through strict constitutional fiscal regulations and strict deficit spending.
However, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius contradicts Scholz by saying that army spending deserves to increase.
“Increasing the war capaurban of the Bundeswehr in the coming years is the primary precedence of the hour,” he said in the central German town of Kassel, where he handing over the first of dozens of complex howitzers of new German stumbling blocks to Ukraine.
Pistorius, of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Scholz, has surpassed surveys as one of Germany’s maximum popular politicians and recently designed to update Scholz as a candidate Chancellor of the Party for the Early February Elections, but retired.
“We will continue on this path in 2025,” he continued. “And we know that in the following years, we will have to invest even more in our security. Two percent can only be the beginning. It will have to be significantly more if we want to continue at the pace and to the extent that we have to.”
Other key NATO figures have also expressed tacit support for Trump’s suggestion, even if 5% was arguably unimaginable in the quick term.
In an interview with the British Financial Times newspaper, published on Mondy, Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said Trump’s demands were an “important wake-up call” for NATO members.
“He should not be criticized for setting a really ambitious target because otherwise there will be some countries that will continue to debate whether more spending is really needed,” he said.
Poland is NATO’s largest taxpayer in terms of relative defense expenses, which involves approximately 4. 2% of GDP to its infantry soldiers in 2024, a figure that Warsaw intends to build up to 4. 7% in 2026. United States same spends “3. 37% of GDP of GDP in defense.
Other main participants come with the states of Baltic Estonia (3. 43%), Latvia (3. 15%) and Lithuania (2. 85%) and Finland (2. 41%) which, such as Poland, the percentage borders with Russia, the exclusive Russian Kalininrad, or the Russian Best friend Belarus.
To see this video, allow javascript and the change to an internet browser that admits the video html5
Mf / lo (dpa, AFP)