Financing the Bundeswehr: “We don’t need any outbidding competition”

Suggestions about what such financing could look like came from both the CDU and the SPD. While SPD budget politician Andreas Schwarz proposed permanently exempting defense and civil defense spending from the debt brake in the Basic Law, CDU defense politician Roderich Kiesewetter went one better by tripling the 100 billion euro special pot for the Bundeswehr on Tuesday morning. The loan-financed special fund was decided after the Russian attack on Ukraine in order to eliminate equipment deficiencies in the Bundeswehr. There were repeated calls that the 100 billion euros were not enough. “It is completely clear that we need 300 billion instead of 100 billion so that the Bundeswehr can become combat-ready,” Kiesewetter told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.