A few days ago, the German Bundestag and the Bundesrat gave the green light for the Bundeswehr Special Fund. The funding will help strenghten Germany’s alliance and defense capabilities and provide the Bundeswehr with modern military equipment, thus reducing the pent-up need for modernisation of the German armed forces. For this to succeed, the funds must be used swiftly and effectively for concrete military equipment projects. It is furthermore important to use the scope provided by the national legislator in line with the current constitutional law and European law and to simplify procurement procedures for specifically defined defense contracts. In addition, various measures have already been initiated to optimise procurement in the Bundeswehr.

Under the leadership of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and in close consultation with the German Federal Ministry of Defense, the German Cabinet today adopted a tool to help draft the Bundeswehr Procurement Acceleration Act, a new law which contains provisions for speeding up both award and review procedures. For the next three and a half years, the planned legislative changes will enable the Bundeswehr's procurement offices to take advantage of simplified procurement rules and thus be able to award contracts more quickly than is possible under the current legislation. The new rules are to apply to contracts for the supply of military equipment to directly strengthen the operational capability of the Bundeswehr and to construction and maintenance services that are directly related to this military equipment.

Key points of the draft law are, for example:

  • the possibility to award several partial or technical lots together if this is justified by economic, technical or time-related reasons.
  • The law will further simplify procedures for cooperative procurements to allow for more cooperative ventures to be entered into at European level. In view of the changed security architecture, common procurement with other Member States of the European Union will play an even greater role.
  • What is more, award and review procedures are to give greater consideration to security interests. To this end, the new law will include provisisons allowing the contracting authority to exclude companies from countries that do not offer the necessary guarantees for safeguarding the security interests of the Federal Republic of Germany from participating in the bidding procedure.
  • Review and appeal procedures will be expedited, for example, by taking greater account of defense and security interests when deciding whether to grant advance approval of the award.

The drafting tool adopted by the Federal Government will serve as the basis for a bill to be introduced from the floor of the German Bundestag. The aim is to complete the legislative procedure before the parliamentary summer recess.