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BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz is putting Germany's rearmament drive at the center of government spending, with a draft budget approved by his cabinet Monday allocating one in every five euros of federal expenditure in 2027 to defense.
By the end of the decade, Germany's defense expenditure is projected to rise to account for nearly one-third of federal spending as Merz's government races to meet NATO's defense spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product.
"We cannot defend ourselves against Putin with a balanced budget," German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said in Berlin Monday when presenting the draft federal budget for 2027. "We must therefore make up for three decades in the shortest possible time, during which our military was cut back due to budget constraints."
