German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said today that the European continent is not currently living in a period of peace, and called for an increase in the production capacity of the arms industry.
Scholz said that European countries must combine their orders and financial support to ensure guarantees for the defense industry in the coming decades. The German chancellor was speaking after laying the foundation stone for the new ammunition factory of the German company Rheinmetall.
“This is urgently needed because it is a painful reality that we do not live in an age of peace. We must move from production to mass production of weapons. Those who want peace must be able to deter the enemy,” Scholz believes.
He added that tanks, howitzers, helicopters and anti-aircraft defense systems “do not sit on the shelves”.
“If there are no orders for them for years, then they are not produced,” Scholz pointed out.
Germany has been quite reserved about its armed forces and arms industry in recent decades due to its military past. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Germany to reconsider its pacifist leanings stemming from World War II and become an advocate of rearmament.
Germany is currently Ukraine’s second-largest arms supplier, and Scholz is calling loudly for other EU countries to contribute more as well.
“Events in Ukraine will decide whether the future will be a peaceful and rule-based world”, Scholz said on Monday. According to him, Russia must not succeed in trying to “absorb its neighbor by force”.
Rheinmetall’s new factory near the village of Unterlüs in Lower Saxony will start operations in 2025 and will initially produce 50,000 shells a year.
Production should increase to 200,000 grenades per year. According to the head of the plant, Armin Papperger, the goal of the new plant is to help Germany secure “strategic sovereignty in the area of large-caliber munitions.”, Klix.ba writes.
