Status: 08/21/2019 12:17 p.m..
The military spending between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States has repeatedly caused disputes. So far, the costs that the federal government pays for US troops in Germany have not been an issue. The sum is immense.
The federal government has supported the US troops in Germany with more than 240 million euros over the past seven years. Among other things, this was used to pay for pension benefits for former employees or for the management of land and buildings. In addition, there is a share in the construction costs of the US armed forces.
The 480 million euros that the federal government has planned for all military construction measures by NATO partners in Germany from 2012 to 2019 are “almost exclusively” in the USA. This emerges from a response from the Ministry of Finance to a request from the Left MP Brigitte Freihold.
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The politician sharply criticized the financial support for the US armed forces. “Germany is a central hub of global US warfare,” she said. “Their subsidization by the German taxpayer must finally anews.website end.”
The majority is stationed in Rhineland-Palatinate.
According to the NATO troop statute, Germany participates in construction work and also bears other costs such as the maintenance of land, social and legal costs.
The US currently has around 35,700 soldiers stationed in four states. More than half of them (18,459) in Rhineland-Palatinate, 11,689 in Bavaria, 3036 in Baden-Württemberg and 2471 in Hesse. According to the US embassy, an additional 17,000 American and 12,000 German civilians are employed by the US armed forces. US soldiers are repeatedly sent to Germany for military maneuvers.
According to the government response, 882 exercises by the US armed forces have taken place in Germany since 2012.
The US wants to send at least 1,000 additional soldiers to Poland and is considering transferring them from Germany there. The US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, had recently linked the considerations to Germany’s lack of military spending. “It is really insulting to expect the US taxpayer to keep paying more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but Germans to use their trade surplus for domestic purposes,” he said. How much the US troop stationing in Germany costs, however, so far neither the US embassy nor the command center for the US armed forces in Europe EUCOM has been able to answer.
Expected costs of up to 650 million euros.
The answer from the Federal Government also shows that the US troop strength in Germany has been cut by more than 3,000 soldiers in the past five years: in 2014 there were 39,150 soldiers. Last September Grenell announced an increase of 1,500 soldiers. There is no longer any question of that.
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The Ministry of Finance assumes that if the construction turnover of recent years is updated, costs for the Federal Republic of around 650 million euros can be expected in the period from 2019 to 2030, reports the Reuters news agency. The German share in the projects includes around 110 million euros in a US school building program in Rhineland-Palatinate.
NDR Info reported on this topic on August 21, 2019 at 10:45 a.m..