Boris Pistorius (SPD) is not lacking problems in getting his ideas for the Bundeswehr through the government. The Defense Minister will present his plans for a new military service this Wednesday. According to him, this should include “compulsory components,” for which there is no majority in sight among the SPD, Greens, and FDP. The situation is similar with regard to finances. Pistorius is demanding an additional 6.7 billion euros for the defense budget, but the governing parties have other priorities.
The CDU and CSU want to draw attention to a less well-known but all the more absurd case of the minister’s lack of assertiveness in the Bundestag on Thursday. The Union faction will then bring a motion to the plenary session that deals with the Army Combat Training Center (GÜZ).
The training ground in Saxony-Anhalt is of central importance for the Bundeswehr’s “competence for war” that Pistorius is striving for. The GÜZ is “the internationally recognized training center of the land forces for combat and support troops,” the ministry says. It is a “high-quality training facility” that is “of even greater importance, particularly as a result of the changing times and the associated demand for combat-ready and combat-capable armed forces.”
Since its founding in 2001, the GÜZ has been operated in a so-called cooperation model with industry. Until 2019, Rheinmetall was the winner, but then the Swedish arms company Saab won the Europe-wide tender. The SPD was not happy with this at the time and therefore pushed through a so-called resolution in the budget committee stating that the GÜZ must be nationalized after the contract with Saab expires in 2026.
The reason given was that operating the center through an external service provider would be more expensive than a model in which the Bundeswehr organizes the center itself. However, these concerns are outdated. In a cost-benefit analysis, the ministry has now come to the conclusion that cooperation with industry is cheaper than a state solution – by between 65 and 103 million euros, depending on the variant.
The Bundeswehr is otherwise satisfied with the status quo. The army praises the cooperation with Saab as being smooth and, given the shortage of personnel, does not have any soldiers left to operate the GÜZ on its own. The FDP and the Greens also have no reservations about continuing the current model.
Only the SPD’s chief budget officer, MP Dennis Rohde, insists on the old agreement. The budget committee’s resolution was made in agreement with the ministry at the time and is “a valid resolution” to this day, Rohde told WELT. “Our view that the army’s central training facility should be operated directly by the Bundeswehr has not changed since 2019.”
All of Pistorius’ efforts to change the mind of his party colleague Rohde were as fruitless as the Union’s attempts to find out the reasons for the SPD’s stance in the Bundestag committees. That is why the members of the governing parties are now expected to show their colours in the plenary session.
“The German Bundestag calls on the Federal Government, within the framework of the available budgetary resources,” states the Union motion submitted to WELT, “to implement the most economical option identified by the Federal Ministry of Defence for the continued operation of the GÜZ, to continue the cooperation model that has proven itself over many years and to initiate the necessary procurement law steps as quickly as possible.”
Because time is of the essence. In order to be able to continue the operation of the GÜZ without interruption after the contract with Saab expires in 2026, the tendering process should have started long ago. The Union sees key questions for continued operation as unanswered. In particular, it is unclear how the simulation software, the heart of the training center, will be provided in the future. This would not be possible without industrial support.
“What is happening at the GÜZ can only be described as a traffic light farce,” said Ingo Gädechens (CDU), the Union parliamentary group’s reporter for the defense budget, to WELT. “We are experiencing power politics of the worst kind here: the successful GÜZ model is to be ended through a Basta policy without having given a single reasonable reason for this decision.”
At the request of the Defense Ministry, the Union “kept quiet for months to give the ministry the requested time to act,” said Gädechens. But nothing happened: “Now I’m curious to see how the traffic light colleagues position themselves: Will they publicly stand by their opinion and finally ensure that the most economical and sensible solution is implemented at the GÜZ? Or will they hide behind bogus arguments that they themselves do not actually find convincing?”
Gädechens is not particularly optimistic. The CDU man sees the GÜZ as “another piece of the puzzle to explain the Boris Pistorius phenomenon: publicly, he is the poll favorite – but he can’t get anything done even within his own party. The fact that the minister has no power base in the Social Democrats bodes ill for the Bundeswehr.”
Florian Hahn (CSU), defence policy spokesman for the Union faction, also criticises the fact that expertise, the positive experiences of the previous operator model and military advice are being deliberately ignored. “The result is enormous risks, high additional costs and even the danger of an interruption of the training and exercise operations that are so important,” Hahn told WELT. “This endangers the level of training of our soldiers, who we send into action for our security.”
The defense minister “has once again failed in his decision to continue operating the combat training center because of his own party. Pistorius’ word has no weight when it matters. His constantly demanded ability to fight in war is thus becoming more and more of an empty phrase.” If Pistorius cannot assert himself on such everyday issues as the operation of a combat training center, says Hahn, “I wonder how he will succeed in politically important decisions such as the budget”: “Prizes for good speeches do not create security.”
