BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s budget committee has approved the purchase of four submarines manufactured by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems in a deal worth 4.7 billion euros ($4.92 billion), the defence ministry said on Wednesday.
The purchase is among 38 so-called “25-million euro proposals” for defence and equipment projects approved by the committee on Wednesday, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said.
It has now approved 97 such proposals this year, he added.
Any military procurement worth more than 25 million euros needs approval from the parliamentary budget committee.
“With these projects, we are investing in all branches of the military,” Pistorius said.
Days after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz surprised allies by announcing a “Zeitenwende” – German for a historic turning point – with a 100-billion-euro special fund to bring the military back up to speed.
Top-ups from that fund will allow Germany to meet NATO’s target for member states spending at least 2% of national output on defence over the next three years, the first time it will have done so since the end of the Cold War in 1990.
However, there is uncertainty about how it will maintain the spending goal when the fund has been exhausted in 2028.
($1 = 0.9548 euros)
(Reporting by Maria Martinez; Editing by Jan Harvey and Gareth Jones)
