Government heads: Eastern countries want to benefit from armaments billions

If the East Germans also pay for arms expenditure in billions of bills, you should also benefit from this: The East Government heads insist on this after consultations with Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius (SPD). “Of course, the locations of the companies are, but of course we can already ensure that the location decisions are made under particularly favorable conditions,” said Merz after the Prime Minister Conference at Etersburg Castle near Weimar.

Build armor locations in the east

With regard to the military tactical requirements on the NATO-East flank, the East German Prime Minister and Prime Minister decided that “production and repair capacities are increasingly establishing in East Germany”.

After the conference, Pistorius said: “We are totally agreed that we have to make all efforts in order to expand the locations for armaments industry in East Germany.” At the same time, he dampened too much expectations. “The reality is as it is. We cannot overlook the fact that there is only a much smaller part of armaments industrial locations in East Germany than in West Germany, especially in southern Germany.” Nothing to change the quickly. The procurement law does not provide quotas and “would also bring us into considerable trouble in terms of time”.

Pistorius announced a conference together with representatives of the armaments industry and the Federal Ministry of Economics. “Defense ability in Germany means strong armaments industry and that means: if possible in all regions of Germany,” said Pistorius. But that will take a while.

For historical reasons, according to the Federal Association of the German Security and Defense Industry, the vast majority of armaments locations in Germany are located in the western federal states.

Pistorius outlined threat situation

Pistorius discussed the current threat situation in Ettersburg: “We are not in war, but we are no longer in the complete peace. We are attacked, hybrid, with disinformation campaigns and by drone ingress,” he said to renewed drone sightings in Denmark. Just two days after the drone alarm at Copenhagen Airport, further drones were spotted about a series of airports in NATO-Land Denmark on Wednesday evening until Thursday.

Merz said in Ettersburg: “We will not allow these attacks to take place. And we will take all measures that are necessary to prevent effective deterrence against these airspace injuries to prevent these attacks by the Russian army.”

Ost representative wants to create space for debates

The Federal Government’s East Commissioner, Elisabeth Kaiser (SPD) sees investment needs in security technology and also in the armaments industry. “And the East German federal states have location potential.” It is their job to create space for social debates on security issues.

Thuringia’s Prime Minister Mario Voigt (CDU) pointed out on the sidelines of the conference that a disproportionately high proportion of the Bundeswehr soldiers from East Germany. “If we owe debts, it will also be about the citizens in the east, who also pay a lot of it.” He expects something from the military spending to arrive in the east. After all, the East has competencies, especially in the look, aerospace and mechanical engineering.

Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) expressed the expectation that out of the 400 billion euros in the federal share in the credit -financed infrastructure package “a large part still has to give East Germany”. He would not say that East Germany had been disadvantaged in the infrastructure in the past decades, but there are holes, including in rail traffic. Merz agreed that projects in the East German countries and Berlin are also taken into account from the so -called special fund.