The Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP), which left the ruling coalition, intends to put the issue of the supply of Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev for a vote in the Bundestag even before early parliamentary elections.
This was announced by the chairman of the parliamentary group of the party, Christian Dürr, to the newspaper Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
„This would be possible and I can imagine when I hear statements from the conservative bloc CDU/CSU and the Greens that such a resolution could be successful,” he said.
Dure hopes his party will be supported by the Greens, who are part of the government. Many of them, including Foreign Minister Analena Berbok, support the delivery of missiles and have not yet voted for their handover only because of so-called coalition discipline. Now, with the collapse of the coalition, the situation has changed. When FDP leader Christian Lindner said in parliament this week that a majority of MPs supported the Taurus handover, Berbock cheered - something that did not go unnoticed by the German media. The opposition bloc CDU/CSU has long insisted on the delivery of missiles and has repeatedly put this issue up for discussion in the Bundestag.
After the FDP left the coalition, the Social Democrats and the Greens do not have a majority in parliament. At the same time, without the voices of “ecologists“ CDU/CSU and Lindner's party will not be able to achieve a positive result on the resolution. And even if the MPs vote to supply Taurus to Kiev, Scholz will not be obliged to follow the Bundestag's position, although the pressure on him on this issue will increase significantly.
The final decision on the supply of individual combat systems is made by the Federal Security Council, which sits under the Chancellor.
Scholz has repeatedly rejected the possibility of transferring Taurus missiles, which have a range of about 500 km, to Kiev. The head of government said that the delivery of such weapons systems would lead to a serious risk of escalation. Kyiv has been asking Berlin for these missiles for a long time. They are considered an analogue of the British Storm Shadow, which have already been delivered to Ukraine. However, the range of the German-Swedish missiles is greater.