Saturday, December 25, 2021
Four billion in nine days
GroKo creates last minute arms export record
In fact, it is common practice that once a government has been voted out of office, it no longer makes far-reaching political decisions. In its final days, however, the grand coalition allowed armaments exports in the billions – breaking the record. Most of the weapons go to Egypt.
The former federal government of the Union and the SPD approved arms exports worth almost five billion euros in the last nine days of their term in office. This increases the total volume of export permits in the current year to a record value of 9.04 billion euros. This emerges from a response from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to a request from the left-wing member of the Bundestag Sevim Dagdelen. Number one among the recipient countries is by far Egypt, which has been criticized for human rights violations and its involvement in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya.
A few days ago it became known that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her then Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz had approved the sale of three warships and 16 air defense systems shortly before the handover on December 8th. Economics Minister Peter Altmaier informed the Bundestag about this just one day before Olaf Scholz was elected Chancellor – but without mentioning the value of the exports.
The answer from the Ministry of Economic Affairs now shows that until the change of government, war weapons and other armaments worth 4.34 billion euros had been approved for Egypt. According to an earlier response from the ministry to a parliamentary question, it was only 0.18 billion euros as of November 29. This means that for Egypt alone, the Merkel government has approved arms exports worth more than four billion euros in the last nine days.
Overall, the Merkel / Scholz government allowed exports amounting to 4.91 billion euros in the last nine days – more than in the almost nine months before combined. What is explosive is that the government was only executive in office during this period. It is common practice for a government to stop making far-reaching political decisions at this stage.
The left-wing foreign politician Dagdelen sharply criticized the behavior of today’s Chancellor Scholz. “Olaf Scholz has done a real crook in the executive government and has impressively demonstrated how unscrupulous the SPD’s criticism of unscrupulous arms exports, especially of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, ultimately remains,” she told the dpa. “This is a heavy burden for the new traffic light government under Scholz.”