German chancellor Olaf Scholz's governing coalition has agreed in principle to double the country's military aid for Ukraine next year to 8 billion euros ($8.5 billion), a political source in Berlin said on Sunday.
This doesn’t appear to be anything official, right? not certain how much a coalition publicly agreeing to this translates to actual funding for Ukraine. Would also be nice to see how this funding stacks vs the US, and vs other EU country contributions.
It’s officially agreed upon by all coalition members, but the finalizing of 2024’s budget where they officially introduce that change is only scheduled for next week.
Also just the original 4 billion € for next year is more than all other countries with the exception of US and UK have spend this whole war…
For comparison, Russia is expected to have tripled their national military budget by 80 to €120 billion per year, or an increase of around 4% GDP. If the EU spends €60 billion /year on aid, that would mean around 0,4% of their GDP.
This doesn’t appear to be anything official, right? not certain how much a coalition publicly agreeing to this translates to actual funding for Ukraine. Would also be nice to see how this funding stacks vs the US, and vs other EU country contributions.
It’s officially agreed upon by all coalition members, but the finalizing of 2024’s budget where they officially introduce that change is only scheduled for next week.
Also just the original 4 billion € for next year is more than all other countries with the exception of US and UK have spend this whole war…
That’s just military aid though. In all, the EU has almost spent €85 billion to support Ukrainians.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attachment/876709/Factsheet_EU_Solidarity_with_Ukraine_EN.pdf.pdf
For comparison, Russia is expected to have tripled their national military budget by 80 to €120 billion per year, or an increase of around 4% GDP. If the EU spends €60 billion /year on aid, that would mean around 0,4% of their GDP.
Aka Russia has a GDP comparable to Italy
Bad ass for Germany and Ukraine. hope things go well.thanks for the context