Moscow – Sputnik. In March, Germany adopted a constitutional amendment that significantly eased restrictions on government borrowing, justified by the need to increase spending on defense and infrastructure.
“If we hadn’t changed the law and weren’t ready to allocate 3.5% of Germany’s GDP to defense, in addition to 1.5% for necessary infrastructure, NATO might have collapsed that day. We prevented that,” he stated in a statement to the German channel ZDF.
Merz justified his decision to amend the law, contrary to his electoral promises, by citing the “radical change” in the situation, but at the same time acknowledged the problem with the rising German debt.
The NATO summit held in The Hague on June 24 and 25 raised the target threshold for defense spending by member states to 5% of GDP by 2035, with an additional 1.5% allocated to related areas such as cybersecurity and critical road infrastructure.
For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the increase in NATO’s defense spending will not have a significant impact on Russia’s security.
