The German army continues to lack “everything” despite Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s commitment to invest massively after the Russian attack on Ukraine, the defense commissioner lamented in the Bundestag on Tuesday.
“It is about training, exercises and also equipment in operation,” lamented the commissioner, for whom the German army “is not fully operational.”
He recalled that the German chancellor had announced an investment of 100,000 million euros a few days after the Russian attack but in 2022 “not one euro or one cent of this special fund has yet been spent.”
clean toilets and showers
The Defense Commissioner requested in particular that the government place orders quickly to fill “gaps” in equipment, accentuated by deliveries of tanks, armored vehicles or even munitions to Ukraine. The state of the barracks also continues to be “regrettable”, Eva Högl has pointed out.
“There is a lack of housing, working bathrooms, clean showers, lockers, indoor sports facilities, kitchens for troops, facilities for coaches, ammunition depots and gun shops, not to mention Wi-Fi,” he said, quantifying “the enormous need for investment ” in “50,000 million euros”.
These investments are all the more necessary, according to her, since the workforce increased by 12% last year, to exceed 180,000. However, the dropout rate during the first six months is still “too high”, reaching 21% in some sectors of the army.
Olaf Scholz said in late September that he wanted Germany to have the “best-equipped armed force in Europe.” But decades of underinvesting in defense have made the task daunting. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has estimated the Bundeswehr’s budget needs at an additional 10 billion euros each year.
Source: BFM TV
