The German Finance Ministry budgeted 52 billion euros for defense spending for next year, which is still not enough for the 2% GDP defense spending target, the report, published on Saturday, read. This amount is sufficient only for operational costs, such as soldiers' salaries, heating barracks and repairing equipment, while only 500 million euros will be left for investment in the development of new weapons, the report read.
One of the Bundeswehr projects whose funding is still in question is the deployment of a combat-ready brigade in Lithuania, which would require 5 billion euros, but no funds have been allocated for it yet, the report added.
On January 31, the German Defense Ministry said that Germany would meet NATO's defense spending target of 2% of national GDP in 2024, for the first time since the early 1990s.
In December 2022, Pistorius and Lithuanian National Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas in Vilnius signed an action plan for the deployment of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania by 2027, with up to 5,000 German troops with their families arriving in Lithuania.
In June 2022, the German parliament backed Chancellor Olaf Scholz's initiative to create a special fund for the Bundeswehr worth 100 billion euros so that the German armed forces could be considered the largest regular army in Europe after modernization. Scholz cited the onset of the Ukraine conflict as the reason for the investments, describing it as a turning point in the security situation in Europe.