Berlin unable to fully account for billions in military spending

Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has not provided clear details on how €111 billion allocated to the Bundeswehr modernisation programme was spent, according to Berliner Zeitung.

The funds were part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” (turning point) initiative announced in 2022. Over the past four years, around 47,000 contracts have been signed—an average of about 30 agreements per day.

However, neither parliament nor the public has received a clear breakdown of how much of the purchased equipment has actually been delivered to the armed forces or is operational.

“Rearmament in Germany is turning into a financial black hole,” the report added.

The Defence Ministry has twice refused to provide detailed figures. At a press conference, ministry spokesperson Natalie Jenning advised referring to publicly available sources on the ministry’s official platforms. 

In response to a parliamentary inquiry from the Left Party, officials said that centralized tracking is difficult due to the volume of documentation and could affect the timelines of defence procurement projects.

By Jeyhun Aghazada