Germany’s defence minister is “annoyed” by a real terms cut to the military budget on the eve of the Nato annual summit in Washington.
The German army was promised a €100 billion (£84.5bn) rearmament fund after decades of underinvestment were brutally exposed by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
But much of the overhaul will have to be funded from the military budget of Europe’s biggest economy, which lags far behind the Nato target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence.
Defence minister Boris Pistorius, of Olaf Scholz’s centre-Left SPD, wanted about £5bn a year on top of his £44bn budget.
After weeks of negotiations with the SPD’s coalition partners, he was given just over £1bn, which is not enough to cover 2.2 per cent annualised inflation rates or surging weapons prices.
The German government is under pressure to show fiscal discipline after a court ruled that using undeployed coronavirus recovery funds for green initiatives and industry support was unconstitutional.
The decision blew a hole of more than £50bn in its finances, forcing Berlin to find spending cuts of up to £33.8bn.