Germany's Scholz talks Ukraine and budget at SPD conference

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday pledged continued financial and military assistance to Ukraine as it tries to rid its soil of Russian invaders, saying decisions will be made that enable Germany to keep up its support.

Scholz's remarks at a party conference of his center-left Social Democrats (SPD) come as his coalition government faces major problems finding enough money to finance the government's spending plans for 2024 following a landmark court ruling.

What did Scholz say about Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine "will probably not finish anytime soon," Scholz said, adding that this made it important that Germany continued to be in a position "to keep supporting Ukraine in its fight to defend itself."

The chancellor said that Russia had abandoned all previous consensus regarding peace and security in Europe when it invaded Ukraine in 2022, and that it had to be made clear that "borders in Europe can no longer be moved by force."

For this reason, he said, Germany had to be prepared to do more "when others are faltering" — an apparent reference to political uncertainties in the US ahead of that country's presidential election new year. 

Scholz said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not, and must not, reckon with any waning of German assistance.

After initial hesitation, Germany has delivered large quantities of weapons to Ukraine, including tanks and heavy artillery, and is now considered the second-biggest contributor to Kyiv's war effort, after the US.

SPD admits past Russian policies a mistake

Later on Saturday, the party members signed off on a foreign policy position paper declaring that the Social Democrats' old, fairly friendly policies towards post-Soviet Russia had been an error. 

The paper said it was a mistake to think that intensifying trade ties would help incentivize and accelerate Russia's democratization, and that this also led to Germany becoming too dependent on energy imports from Russia. 

"It was a mistake not to distance ourselves from the Putin system earlier," party chairman Lars Klingbeil said at the conference. 

However, he also defended the Cold War era "Ostpolitik" of former Chancellor Willy Brandt, that involved more diplomatic outreach to the former Soviet Union.

Klingbeil alleged that some of the conservative critics of the SPD were more interested in "throwing dirt on Willy Brandt's legacy" than in learning foreign policy lessons from previous German approaches to Putin's Russia. 

One statement in the SPD's 2021 election manifesto, in particular, had come in for criticism since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It said: "There can be no peace in Europe against Russia, only peace with it." 

That will now be replaced with: "As long as nothing changes fundamentally in Russia, Europe's safety from Russia will have to be organized." 

Gerhard Schröder — the former SPD chancellor most commonly associated with friendly ties to Putin, who went on to hold various positions with Russian state oil and gas companies after leaving office — was pointedly not invited to this weekend's conference. 

 

What else did Scholz say?

Speaking on domestic affairs, Scholz said his party would not allow large reductions in welfare assistance despite the budgetary problems.

"There will be no dismantling of the welfare state in Germany in such a situation," he said, while admitting that budget talks with coalition partners the environmentalist Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) were "a very hard task."

But "we are not faced with an insoluble problem," he added.

"I would like to take this opportunity to convey the confidence that we will succeed. And that we will succeed in a way that is important for the future of this country," the chancellor told his party colleagues.

Scholz is to continue negotiations on the 2024 budget on Sunday with Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the FDP and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens.

Germany's budget chaos has been largely caused by a ruling of the Constitutional Court in mid-November that a move to redirect €60 billion ($65 billion) of unused debt from the pandemic era to a climate fund was unconstitutional. This has left a considerable hole in planned spending by the German government to combat climate change.

There are also differences within the three-way coalition over the so-called debt brake, with the SPD and Greens wanting it to be lifted once more, something the FDP rejects.

tj, msh/rt (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

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