Germany will have to dramatically increase its defence spending from current levels to deal with external threats, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.
Hinting at plans for a European Army, Merkel said the European Union was not currently in a position to defend itself and it could not just rely on its transatlantic partnership with the United States.
Speaking at an economics conference in Berlin, she argued: ‘Sure enough this means that a country like Germany, which today spends around 1.2 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, and the United States, which spends 3.4 percent of GDP for defence will have to converge.’
‘It will not go well in the long run that we say that we hope and wait that others bear the defence services for us,’ she added.
Her speech at the Business Forum of the CDU in Berlin comes after German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen last month announced the country's first army expansion since the Cold War.
In 2015, Miss von der Leyen spoke of Germany’s desire to create a European Army.
‘The European Army is our long-term goal’ she said ‘but first we have to strengthen the European Defence Union.’
‘The United States also wants us Europeans as a powerful force within NATO.
‘To achieve this, some nations with concrete military cooperation must come to the fore - and the Germans and the Dutch are doing this,’ she said.
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