OREANDA-NEWS. Rolf Muetzenich, the head of the Social Democratic Party of Germany faction (the ruling coalition in the Bundestag), intends to advocate during the election campaign for the rejection of Germany's obligation to spend on defense an amount equivalent to 2% of GDP. In an interview published on Wednesday, April 28, to the «Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung» newspaper Mutzenich said, that he fully shares the position of the Green Party's chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock, who called linking defense spending with GDP absurd. «She's absolutely right», Mutzenich said.

At the same time, the social Democratic politician sharply criticized the negative attitude of Baerbock to the controversial German-Russian gas pipeline «Nord Stream-2». «The actions of the Greens could not be more hypocritical», Mutzenich said, recalling that Burbock's party colleague Robert Habeck, when he was Minister of Environmental Protection in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, opened a terminal for receiving liquefied gas produced in the United States by fracking. «In this light, Barbok's criticism of the gas pipeline is not credible», Rolf Mutzenich said.

After Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the NATO allies agreed to increase their defense spending to two percent of their countrie's GDP within a decade. In recent years, former US President Donald Trump has been particularly critical of Germany for making too low contributions to the NATO budget and accused the German government of providing German defense at the expense of the United States.