Germany's development minister, Reem Alabali-Radovan of the Social Democrats, is lobbying for a dedicated carve-out from the country's constitutional debt brake so that funding for Ukraine can keep flowing without being squeezed by the same borrowing limits that apply to the rest of the federal budget.
The push comes as her ministry's own numbers show just how much civilian support for Ukraine has already shrunk. This year's allocation sits at roughly €330 million, down sharply from €670 million in 2022 and €750 million in 2023, a decline she argues is now undercutting Germany's ability to sustain the kind of support Kyiv has come to rely on.
A Stark Warning From the Minister
Alabali-Radovan framed the stakes bluntly, arguing that Russian attacks are only getting worse, bringing more deaths, more destruction and more suffering, even as development assistance budgets keep shrinking. Her point was that continuing the current trajectory of cuts would make it impossible to hold support for Ukraine at anything close to its current level, let alone scale it up to match the worsening situation on the ground.
She also used her platform at the IMF and World Bank meetings to argue that other countries need to step up their own contributions, suggesting Germany cannot be expected to keep absorbing the gap left by multi-year budget commitments that leave little flexibility for responding to an active crisis.