As of: March 13, 2024, 5:03 a.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz vehemently rejects Taurus deliveries to Ukraine - Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann sharply criticizes this in the interview: It is frightening that "Putin's narrative falls on fertile ground in the Chancellery".
Tegernsee - Wiretapping scandal, arms deliveries to Ukraine, European elections - she has a lot to do at the moment: Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) is running as her party's top candidate for the European Parliament and, as chairwoman of the Defense Committee, has to clarify the wiretapping affair.
Russia had published a recorded conference call between four high-ranking officers, including Air Force Chief Ingo Gerhartz.
In it, they discussed operational scenarios for the German Taurus cruise missile if it were to be delivered to Ukraine.
So far, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is strictly against it.
Ippen.Media
met Strack-Zimmermann as part of a business day at Tegernsee.
Despite the strikes last week, she made it to the event.
“I no longer understand it.
Everyone thinks they have to drop everything at the expense of the community,” says Strack-Zimmermann.
The interview will be about the Taurus dispute, the wiretapping affair and German and European defense policy.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), Chairwoman of the Bundestag Defense Committee, at the return appeal of Bundeswehr soldiers from Lithuania in the Ernst Moritz Arndt Barracks.
(Archive image) © Markus Scholz/dpa
Ms. Strack-Zimmermann, what lessons would you now draw from the Taurus wiretapping affair?
Strack-Zimmermann:
We have known for a long time that we have been spied on for years.
Espionage activities have reached the high levels we saw during the Cold War.
All three intelligence services, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Federal Intelligence Service and the Military Counterintelligence Service, are facing major challenges today and must adapt accordingly in terms of personnel and technology.
In addition, everyone who works in security-relevant, sensitive areas must also do their part to protect their data and the communication space.
Sitting in a shelter won't help if you leave the door open during an attack.
If, as happened, a participant dials into a protected communication room with a simple cell phone, then he undermines the security concept.
Sensitivity to this must be significantly increased both in the Bundeswehr and in other state institutions.
We are exposed to a Russian cyber attack on a massive scale.
No more funny.
What steps do you think Germany should take next?
We will be informed about this on Monday.
I have called a special meeting of the Defense Committee.
The Federal Minister of Defense, the Inspector General and the President of the Military Counterintelligence Service will answer our questions.
We can at least state from the intercepted conversation transcript that the content of the conversation was not classified as “secret”, but rather under the regulations “classified information for official use only”.
The conversation is therefore not about a betrayal of secrets.
The content didn't really bring us anything new, it just contained what we've known for months, namely that the Taurus can be delivered to Ukraine without the Bundeswehr being deployed on site.
What do we learn from this: We have to be alarmed, more defense personnel are needed, and citizens have to be told what situation we are now living in and that these hybrid Russian attacks on our state are intended to harm us severely damage.
This also includes the targeted distribution of fake news on the Internet.
The latter is intended to dismantle our society from within.
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It is frightening that Putin's narrative is finding fertile ground in the Chancellery.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Do you think Chancellor Olaf Scholz will change his mind about the Taurus?
As we all know, hope dies last.
Now that this leak has reaffirmed to all of us that all of his reasons for denying Ukraine this system have just vanished into thin air, he could actually say “yes.”
But he now fled to the front and announced during a school visit a few days ago that he was, after all, the Federal Chancellor and would make the same decisions.
It is incomprehensible that the Defense Minister, who should know better, now shares this approach after initial reluctance.
We all know that there can be no such thing as a chancellor.
The cruel Russian war in Ukraine is a reality.
If the situation changes, the answers must also change.
Ukraine has no time to lose.
It is frightening that Putin's narrative is finding fertile ground in the Chancellery.
Key point: arms delivery to Ukraine. The arms industry simply cannot keep up with production...
The Federal Republic was the worst customer of its own industry.
Companies logically adapt to the order situation.
This means that resources have been reduced over decades.
Assuming that companies can increase capacity in a very short space of time is a bit quixotic.
How could the German arms industry be helped now?
The Federal Republic must increase its pace: reduce bureaucratic obstacles, issue approvals more quickly, place orders so that industry can plan and suspend the EU taxonomy.
The criteria for ecologically sustainable business are defined there.
The purchase of military material is explicitly excluded, which means that it is difficult for the relevant companies to have their investments financed on the capital market.
The money issue is also about the Bundeswehr's special assets, but that won't be enough for much longer. Will there be a new edition soon?
These 100 billion euros, which Finance Minister Christian Lindner has set up as a special fund, are based on the Bundeswehr's plans and are what is needed to initiate the modernization of the army.
These billions are expected to be spent in 2026.
From the 2027 budget at the latest, a higher budget will have to be set continuously.
Just to invest the two percent of the gross domestic product required by NATO in our security.
It's finally time for the current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to get going.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
The EU presented its defense strategy on Tuesday. Your opinion on this?
It's finally time for the current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to get going.
She was our country's defense minister for a full six years.
She knows the complexity of the topic and has ignored it for the last five years.
Instead, it has slavishly implemented the green ideas of former Climate Protection Commissioner Frans Timmermanns down to the smallest detail.
These bureaucratic regulations, this little-little, have taken away the breathing room of the middle class.
In the new legislature, after the election on June 9th, a full-fledged defense committee and a commissioner should be established to deal with Europe's security.
This also includes initiating more joint procurement in the future.
Every nation currently regulates its own security.
Organizing these together in the future would be strategically extremely clever and would create a lot of synergy effects, so that the bottom line is that the individual countries would have to spend significantly less money.
The European countries could complement each other, not every EU member would have to procure everything, so we in the EU would become ready for defense much more quickly in the medium term.
The Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wants a European defense fund. But Mr. Lindner is against it. How do you rate that?
His demand seems unrealistic given the budget situation of the member states.
Simply transferring money without a clear plan of what to do with the funds won't work.
So before thinking about the means, a consensus must first be found about the threat scenario Europe is exposed to.
Europe does not really have a common foreign policy.
As long as each country only has its own geographical view of things and does not think collectively, it will remain a challenge to build a common European defense policy.
Would this also be something you would push if you were elected to the European Parliament?
I would like to get involved in this area after the European elections.
Security, defense and procurement must be organized hand in hand on the basis of a common foreign policy so that in an emergency we are able to defend this great peace, economic and constitutional union.