Germany has suggested that it could boost defence spending to 5% of GDP, putting the country in line with US President Donald Trump’s demands.<\/p>\n
Trump has long urged NATO partners to increase their military expenditure. Initially, he wanted to see each country spend 2% of GDP on defence, but the figure late rose to 5%.<\/p>\n
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul spoke about the issue with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Turkey, where talks between Russia and Ukraine are due to take place.<\/p>\n
Wadephul said for the first time that Germany would follow the US President’s plea to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are following him there,” Wadephul said.<\/p>\n
Why the change of heart?<\/p>\n
Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the Social Democrats (SPD), distanced himself from Trump’s higher demand, explaining this year that \u201c5% would be over \u20ac200 billion per year\u201d.<\/p>\n
The federal budget \u201cdoes not even amount to \u20ac500 billion\u201d, Scholz said in Bielefeld in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would only be possible with massive tax increases or massive cuts to many things that are important to us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during the election campaign that GDP percentages were \u201cnot expedient\u201d.<\/p>\n
At an event in early January, he explained that \u201cwhether it’s 2, 2.5 or 5%, to be honest, that’s only of secondary importance to me”.<\/p>\n
‘The strongest army in Europe’<\/p>\n
For Merz, it is crucial that Germany invests more in its army, which is known as the Bundeswehr.<\/p>\n
In his first government statement on Wednesday, Merz said it would become the \u201cconventionally strongest army in Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Bundeswehr currently lacks personnel. Nevertheless, there will be no compulsory military service for the time being, confirmed SPD Defence Minister Boris Pistorius.<\/p>\n
Military service will continue to be based on voluntary service, inspired by the Swedish model.<\/p>\n
Related<\/b><\/p>\n
To change this, the new German government would require two-thirds of politicians to back it in the Bundestag, a majority which it does not have.<\/p>\n
The leftist Die Linke or The Left party, which currently has 64 members in parliament, is opposed to compulsory military service.<\/p>\n
Ates G\u00fcrpinar, the party’s deputy federal chairman, told Euronews: \u201cThe Left Party rejects compulsory military service. The suspension of conscription in 2011 was a great success for the conscientious objection movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
This means that the German government can only pass a new conscription law with the votes of the far-right AfD party, whose election manifesto stated that conscription should not be for women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany has suggested that it could boost defence spending to 5% of GDP, putting the country in line…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[47955,32,2000,299,1945,1824,29135,47954,7337,38228],"class_list":{"0":"post-103886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-compulsory-military-service","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-johann-wadephul","15":"tag-military-expenditure","16":"tag-olaf-scholz","17":"tag-secretary-of-state-marco-rubio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114512650761415376","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}