Next week, the Union wants to vote again on a “Taurus” delivery to Ukraine. SPD General Secretary Kühnert sees this calmly. But the criticism of the Chancellor’s course continues.
The Union wants to have the Bundestag vote again on the delivery of the “Taurus” cruise missile to Ukraine. However, according to SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, she cannot expect a majority thanks to additional votes from the traffic light coalition.
In response to a corresponding question, Kühnert said on the ZDF program “Maybrit Illner”: “No, I don’t think so, we have a coalition agreement with each other in which it is clearly stipulated that the coalition partners agree on political content together and do not agree to opposition proposals , even if Ms. Strack-Zimmermann saw things differently in the last week of the meeting.”
During the vote two weeks ago, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairwoman of the Defense Committee, voted for a proposal from the Union faction. The FDP politician has already announced that she will also approve the new proposal. “My opinion is known and will not change. I will behave accordingly in further votes,” she told the news portal t-online.
The deputy FDP chairman Wolfgang Kubicki had already announced at the beginning of the week that he would now vote for a new Union proposal – which had not yet been announced at the time. “Last time, at least a dozen other colleagues I know would have loved to have agreed to the Union proposal, but they submitted to coalition discipline. I was also close to doing so,” Kubicki told the “Münchner Merkur”. This time he would have reached the point of doing it.
New application from the Union next Thursday
The Union faction will put a proposal for the delivery of “Taurus” cruise missiles to a vote next Thursday. This is what their parliamentary manager Thorsten Frei said ARD capital studio.
Regarding the new initiative, Kühnert said that the Union was free to apply for whatever it thought was right. “But I’m also free to see it as a certain degree of slapstick now.” All debates in the Bundestag on the topic revolved solely around the “Taurus”. “If we get the motion back, then it will be voted on again. And then I can only speak for my own ranks and say: everyone in the SPD stands by what the Chancellor said.”
Scholz against “Taurus” delivery
Olaf Scholz (SPD) rejects the delivery of cruise missiles with a range of 500 kilometers to Ukraine because he fears that this could drag Germany into the war. On Monday last week he gave his first detailed public justification for his rejection. Scholz is not only in a foreign policy environment, but also in a domestic policy environment and takes people’s concerns seriously, said Kühnert. He must take full responsibility for the decision about a “Taurus” delivery.
Regarding the accusation that the SPD wanted to run the election campaign as a peace party, Kühnert said: “That is an infamous accusation that does not do justice to the significance of the entire decision.” He doesn’t want the goal of peace in Europe to be dragged into the mud.
Sharp criticism from CDU politician Kiesewetter
The CDU defense politician Roderich Kiesewetter sharply criticized Scholz on the “Taurus” issue. “The Chancellor deliberately misled his own coalition, even though a majority of MPs there support the delivery of Taurus to protect Ukraine,” Kiesewetter told the ARD capital studio. It would therefore make sense to allow another vote next week, “now that everyone knows definitively that there are no legal or technical reasons against supplying the cruise missiles to Ukraine.” No Bundeswehr soldiers are needed and there is no question of becoming a party to the war with a delivery.
Kiesewetter was alluding to the question of whether Bundeswehr soldiers would have to support the operation. Statements by the Chancellor had indicated this. However, against the background of the wiretapping affair, the Union comes to a different verdict.
In a conversation intercepted by Russia, Bundeswehr officers discussed possible scenarios in the event of the cruise missile being delivered to Ukraine. They also came to the conclusion that Ukrainian soldiers could operate the weapon system after intensive training without outside help, i.e. without the involvement of German soldiers. For the CDU and CSU it is clear that there are no longer any hurdles to delivery.
Majority against “Taurus” delivery
People in Germany are critical of a “Taurus delivery”. In the ARD GermanyTrend 61 percent of those surveyed rejected a delivery. That’s nine points more compared to ARD GermanyTrend in the Morning magazine from August 2023. Only 29 percent (-7) are in favor of such a delivery of weapons.