German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has dismissed the demand of Economy Minister and Green party top candidate Robert Habeck for a drastic increase in defense spending to 3.5% of the economic output.
“The idea seems a bit unrefined to me. To nearly double the defense budget of around 80 billion euros to 140 billion euros without saying where the money will be spent and where it will come from” Scholz told the “Stern”. “Who’s going to pay the bill? The citizens?”
Habeck had called for an increase in the defense budget to 3.5% of the gross domestic product in the coming years. Currently, all NATO alliance partners are expected to invest at least 2% of their gross domestic product in defense. Germany has only recently reached this goal for the first time in decades, and is expected to do so again in 2024.
In the “Stern”, Scholz also expressed criticism of Habeck’s heating law. “It was wrong to break the exchange of heating systems in private homes over the knee” the Chancellor said. “I believe the responsible minister has also understood that his plans were not good back then.” For him, the principle of climate protection is: “less ideology, more pragmatism”.