Bundestag should decide
Union wants to force a vote on weapons for Ukraine
4/24/2022, 6:49 p.m
Union faction leader Merz puts pressure on the traffic light coalition. A decision on the arms deliveries should be made. With a ready-made application, the CDU leader wants the Bundestag to decide on heavy weapons for Ukraine.
In view of the disputes within the traffic light coalition, the Union faction apparently wants to force a vote in the Bundestag on arms deliveries to Ukraine. The Union faction wrote an application, which they sent to the government factions as a basis for consultation, writes the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
“We are offering the coalition a joint motion for a resolution that will clarify which weapons Germany is ready to deliver,” said CDU leader and Union faction leader Friedrich Merz of the newspaper. Germany should “best do what the Americans and other Europeans consider necessary and right – then Germany will not be ahead, but it will not lag behind its allies either”. If there is no agreement with the traffic light groups, the Union wants to submit its application to the Bundestag alone, it is said.
The draft application states that German arms deliveries must be “immediately and noticeably increased in quantity and quality”. To this end, armaments from the stocks of the Bundeswehr should go to the Ukraine in the greatest possible extent without delay. According to the Union, the armaments include battle tanks and armored personnel carriers, artillery systems, ammunition and anti-tank weapons as well as “all other means necessary to combat the Russian invasion troops”.
More weapons are said to come from the industry. The Bundestag should call on the federal government to “decide immediately on offers from the security and defense industry to deliver material and weapons from companies, including ‘heavy weapons’ such as armored weapon systems and artillery systems, to Ukraine in the shortest possible time”. According to the application, a separate head office in the Chancellery should coordinate future arms deliveries.
Merz had asked Chancellor Olaf Scholz for a government statement on his Russia course and arms deliveries to Ukraine in the Bundestag next week. Scholz must say how he assesses the situation and should discuss the way with the opposition, said the Union faction leader.
Anger about 100 billion package
According to Merz, the Union also does not want to agree to the special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr. “I can only warn the federal government against repeating the procedure, as with compulsory vaccination, in the Bundeswehr,” said Merz of the “Bild am Sonntag”. “This time, too, we will not allow the federal government to put negotiated and ready-made results on the table, which we then simply have to agree to. If the chancellor wants to persuade us to change the Basic Law and for 100 billion euros in new debt, then he has to he talk to us.”
Merz formulated several conditions for his party’s approval: “We demand that the 100 billion euros be used exclusively to upgrade the Bundeswehr and that at least 2 percent of gross domestic product be spent on defense in the long term – as the Federal Chancellor stated in his government statement on April 27. February in the German Bundestag said. If these requirements are met and a repayment plan is presented for the new debts, then we can agree.”