Germany is accusing French manufacturer Dassault of blocking negotiations over the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) project.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Where does this claim of incompetence come from?

    Defense Minister under Merkel

    Von der Leyen is blamed for neglecting the state of the German army. Many units have sorely outdated equipment and living conditions of barracks not being looked after. Many barracks are too cold to sleep in iirc. To be honest, I haven’t delved into it much but this is what Germans in Reddit and others mentioned.

    So where’s her current incompetence? What did I miss?

    There is the Pfizergate, which Von der Leyen made deals with Pfizer for the covid vaccines through text messages, which is very informal and unprofessional.

    Von der Leyen previously used her phone to award contracts worth several hundred million euros while acting as defense minister of Germany, effectively bypassing public procurement processes. She subsequently deleted all messages from her phone when investigators probed her. While awarding the COVID-19 vaccine contracts worth billions of euros as head of EU commission, she similarly bypassed procurement processes via her phone and withheld messages on it.

    • Kornblumenratte@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      Thank you for the Pfizergate link. Her handling of COVID was pretty bad, that’s true.

      Regarding the sorry state of the German army – the Bundeswehr was neglected by every single government since the reunification, and von der Leyen was one of the few, if not the only defense minister in 30 years who addressed the issue and tried to improve the state of the army. It’s more complicated than competent/incompetent.