This budget, which must be debated in Parliament in the coming days, provides for this year 50 billion euros in military spending, a "record", according to a government source.

Added to this is an exceptional fund endowed with 100 billion euros set up in 2022, but which will be used over several years.

These decisions "will put us in a position to be able to achieve the objective of 2% of GDP in the coming years", added the government source.

In 2018, the first economy in the euro zone had, in comparison, devoted only 38.8 billion euros to its defense.

This expenditure has gradually increased in recent years to reach nearly 47 billion last year.

After years of underinvestment, Germany made a historic U-turn at the end of February, due to the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army which came as a shock.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz then announced an exceptional envelope of 100 billion euros to modernize the army, and the objective of exceeding 2% of military expenditure in GDP.

Fuel measures in sight

Berlin is therefore maintaining the course of significant budgetary expenditure in 2022, after two years marked by the coronavirus pandemic which required significant public support for the economy.

Since 2020, Germany has indeed had to abandon its sacrosanct rules of budgetary rigor, which prohibit it from borrowing more than 0.35% of its GDP each year, to deal with the health crisis.

For 2022, the coalition government associating social democrats, ecologists and liberals is counting on a new high debt of 99.7 billion euros, against 215.4 billion in 2021.

But this amount could increase insofar as Berlin “is currently drawing up an additional program intended to attenuate the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine”, indicates one to the ministry of Finances.

This plan could include an immediate reduction in the price of gasoline for cars, which would be compensated by the state, German media said this weekend, citing government sources, without specifying the amount.

However, the government intends to return to its budgetary brake rule as of 2023, with a new debt forecast of only 7.5 billion euros.

"Germany is investing heavily in defence, digitization and the ecological transition, but at the same time we are maintaining our objective of complying with the debt brake of our Constitution from next year", thus recently affirmed the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Finance, Christian Lindner.

© 2022 AFP