Germany’s New Foreign Policy Position - 27 February 2022 21:21 (GMT)
During today’s special session of the German Bundestag, Chancellor Olaf Scholz once more condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In his speech he called out Vladimir Putin for “shattering the European security order” and announced the German government’s decision to directly supply weapons to Ukrainian troops. These deliveries consist of 1000 anti-tank weapons and 500 surface-to-air missiles. The decision is surprising as Germany strictly followed its principle to not supply weapons to areas of conflict.
In addition, he underlined the importance of the imposed sanctions in co-operation with the European Union, such as banning important Russian banks from the European SWIFT payment system.
Lastly, Scholz vouched to increase German support to NATO missions in Eastern Europe and announced to allocate €100 billion from the national budget to invest in the German military. Furthermore, he plans to assign yearly more than 2% of Germany’s GDP as defense expenditure.
All these steps come somewhat unexpected as Germany was hesitant about imposing sanctions that could threaten Russian gas supplies which are an important energy resource for the country. Scholz addressed this dependence on energy imports and laid out first steps towards increasing the country's reserves in gas and coal, such as constructing two Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals. It seems that Scholz and his government are set on siding with its allies to impose harder sanctions on Russia and increase Germany’s strategic autonomy through heavy investments in its military and defensive capabilities.