Bundestag approves constitutional amendments unlocking €3 billion in military aid for Ukraine
Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, has approved a bill to amend the Basic Law to ease debt restrictions. This should attract billions of euros of investment in defense and infrastructure, as well as unlock 3 billion euros for military aid to Ukraine.
This was reported by Censor.NET with reference to Ukrinform.
The draft law on amendments to the Basic Law was adopted by the votes of the CDU/CSU, SPD, and the Greens.
Thus, the draft law received 513 votes out of the required 489 (two-thirds) votes of all members of the German parliament.
The right-wing radicals from Alternative for Germany, both left-wing parties - the Left and the Sarah Wagenknecht Bloc - and one democratic party - the Free Democrats - voted against, a total of 207 lawmakers.
In total, 720 parliamentarians cast their votes.
The document was submitted for consideration by the parliamentary groups of the Social Democratic Party and the conservative bloc of the Christian Democratic and Christian Social Unions.
In the future, defense and some security policy expenditures exceeding 1% of nominal GDP will be exempt from the debt rule.
This clause gives the green light to unblock €3 billion in military aid to Ukraine.
In addition, a special fund of 500 billion euros is to be created for additional investments in infrastructure and additional investments to achieve climate neutrality by 2045.
In addition, local authorities will be given the opportunity for additional borrowing when preparing the budgets of the federal states.
The bill has already been approved by the Bundestag Budget Committee on March 16.
