Maybe Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has for the first time in her life served her country a disservice. She had a somewhat loose tongue and blabbed out what is planned after the elections.
“As the spending plans would be announced after the German elections on February 23 to avoid sparking controversies before the election, according to employees who were informed about the plans” writes Bloomberg.
At the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Baerbock said:
“We will package a big one, like it has never been seen in this magnitude. Similar to the Euro or the Corona crisis, there is now a financial package for security in Europe. This will come soon.”
The Berliner Zeitung, which picked up the report, adds:
“Baerbock had already let slip that it’s about around 700 billion euros.”
At this monstrous sum, it will mainly be about weapon deliveries to Ukraine. To evaluate this, one should take a look at a few house numbers.
The grand coalition broke apart over “aid” to Ukraine in the amount of three billion euros, because even these additional billions would either require massive cuts or the abolition of the debt brake, which the coalition partners could not agree on.
The entire federal budget for 2024 totaled 476.8 billion euros. What this means is that the sum to be invested in various forms of armament exceeds the total amount of funds available at the federal level in a year.
It is to be decided at an EU summit in Brussels in March, according to Bloomberg. However, what is decided at an EU summit will also be financed by the EU – namely, the EU that is at least a third financed by German tax money. This could become even more in the future, as France is bankrupt and not only the German economy is suffering under the sanctions’ consequences.
Nothing would change, either, if this giant armament package is first financed through an EU Commission authorization to take out a loan. And at the end, at least a third of it will land on the German bill.
700 billion, which is to be sunk into a lost war or to pretend security through rearmament, which could be achieved much better through the long-forgotten art of diplomacy? Only gifts to the arms industry and a calming pill for the US military-industrial complex to smooth out the waves with the new US government?
In any case, this would be a new and completely shameless round of the exploitation of European peoples, who are already being drained by inflation and higher energy prices. A more complex form of the plunder of the common citizen, wrapped in political phrases of an imaginary Russian threat and through the Brussels detour, also deprived of the possibility of a change of heart. If the elections in Germany go wrong.
Yes, that’s how it looks when Frau Baerbock again doesn’t care what her voters think. Because, regardless of whether the CDU, which is likely to win these elections according to previous polls, coalesces with the SPD, the Greens, or both – the existing misery of rising living costs plus CO2 taxes plus the entire climate chaos and the planned rearmament for Germany will then just come on top of that. In other words, the plunder will be set in stone, as long as only one of these three parties comes to power.
No, that’s not a pretty outlook. Because the possible future of the country will be mortgaged, which is already barely salvageable. Economically, that is. And that at a moment when the deindustrialization of Germany is accelerating, which causes the very real, material foundations for state revenue to crumble.
Regardless, let’s get the coal, Ukraine is a noble cause, as long as there’s still a resident left to be cremated. There are no problems in the country, the infrastructure is in top shape, the schools provide great education, our retirees live in ease, what are 700 billion to that?
That sounds very much like something that has been long since rigged and if one in Brussels didn’t have the quiet suspicion that this wouldn’t taste good to the Germans, being taken for a ride in this way, it would probably already be a done deal. And after that, the monster EU would probably also be equipped with the right to levy taxes and this Brussels monster would be eternally established as a second state over our heads.
No. 700 billion demand an answer. A clear, unmistakable no. Somewhere, the hostility towards one’s own population has to come to an end. The end of not even asking the important questions at the election. The end of simply everything being pawned off because one thinks one has to maintain a war against Russia.
Baerbock has let something slip out that makes all parties that are firmly committed to the EU and willing to take such decisions with them, unwinnable. One could live in a peaceful country that cares about the problems of its citizens. Or one can vote for CDU, SPD, Greens and Left.