MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th November, 2020) Germany anticipates financial difficulties amid the COVID-19 pandemic when increasing its defense budget but aims at sticking to its previous goals, Thomas Silberhorn, a senior member of the German Defense Ministry, said on Tuesday at an online conference organized by the "Friends of Europe" think tank.
"Of course, it will be a challenge because all countries are confronted with the growing pressure from the part of our national budgets due to the impact of the corona pandemic," Thomas Silberhorn said.
Military spending among NATO European member states and Canada has been on the increase for the sixth consecutive year in 2020 as one-third of member-states reached a 2 percent GDP alliance benchmark, according to a NATO report released in October. Germany, however, continues to spend only 1.57 percent of its gross domestic product on its military, the report said.
The official underlined that Germany was forced to cut its defense spending because of the global financial crisis in 2008, adding that these days the country had to deal with consequences of the cut.
"Our experience with cutting the defense budget by 5 billion Euros 10 years ago amid the global financial crisis led to the decline in personnel and equipment, these are harsh consequences to deal with. The decrease in equipment led to an industrial decrease as well and now we have to spend lots of money to fill up these gaps," he said.
According to Silberhorn, later this week there would be a final meeting in the Bundestag's defense committee for the budget adoption. Germany is expected to stick to the goal of increasing the defense budget.
Germany's defense spending has been criticized by US President Donald Trump and cited as a reason for issuing a directive to pull nearly 12,000 US troops out of Germany.
