Germany Defense Minister: unbridgeable shortcomings, stop arms for Ukraine

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has admitted that shortages in Germany's armed forces cannot be filled entirely by 2030. Germany will no longer send new weapons to Ukraine. "Germany's military shortfalls cannot be filled entirely by 2030." This is what the German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said in an interview with the Sunday edition of the newspaper "Die Welt" and as reported by Agenzia Nova. “It will take years. Everyone knows that,” the minister said about the need for the German military to modernize and replenish its equipment after the war in Ukraine began.

The main German economic institutes have corrected their joint growth forecasts for Germany in 2023 upwards, bringing them from the -0.4 percent estimated last September to +0.3 percent. For 2024, the figure has been revised downwards from 1.9 to 1.5 per cent. This is what we learn from the report published by the Munich Institute for Economic Research (Ifo), the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Ifw), the Halle Institute for Economic Research (Iwh) and the Institute for Economic Research of Essen (RWI).

According to the new forecasts, Germany should not fall into the dreaded winter recession. For the first quarter of 2023, growth of 0.1 percent is in fact estimated after the 0.4 percent contraction suffered by GDP in the last three months of last year. On the inflation front, Ifo, Ifw, Iwh and Rwi expect the indicator to fall from 6 percent in 2023 to 2.4 percent in 2024. In September, the figure was estimated at 8.8 percent in this year and just over 2 percent next year.