The rights of the Defence Committee as regards preparation of the budget

The federal budget is adopted annually by the German Bundestag in the form of a law. The draft budget submitted by the Federal Government is referred to the Budget Committee for deliberation. Though the Defence Committee is not assigned any formal competence as regards the deliberations on the budget law, it nonetheless exerts considerable influence on the budget deliberations by considering, in deliberations which mostly last several days, the departmental budget of the Federal Ministry of Defence and the budget of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces and informing the Budget Committee of its opinion. As a rule, the Budget Committee takes its recommendations into account.

In addition, the Defence Committee exerts influence on the execution of the defence budget as a result of the obligation of the Minister of Defence, irrespective of the budget law, to submit to the Defence Committee all procurement projects of special importance in security or military policy terms, as well as those procurement projects requiring an outlay of €25 million and upwards, for the Committee to deliberate on them. In parliamentary practice, such procurement projects have so far not been implemented, even if they were included in the budget law, without the consent of the Defence Committee.