Weapons production for Ukraine: German town opposes arms company's expansion
The German defense company Diehl BGT Defense GmbH & Ko KG is looking for land in Troisdorf in western Germany, not far from Cologne, in order to increase its production for the benefit of Ukraine. But the community is against it for security reasons and for local development reasons, she argues.
The mayor of the town of Troisdorf, which has a population of almost 80,000, was interviewed by the German Defense Minister, who called on municipalities and regions to work to speed up arms production. “The pressure (…) is great because there is a real shortage of ammunition in Europe and Germany,” said Minister Boris Pistorius.
A wide range of elected officials, from the conservative mayor Alexander Bieber (CDU) to the Greens to the left-wing extremist party Die Linke, i.e. two-thirds of the local council, refuse to sacrifice such an area in the middle of the city. “The production of explosives and military equipment requires enormous open spaces, i.e. protective zones around the factory, which cannot be built for security reasons,” is the community’s argument.
For Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairwoman of the Bundestag Defense Committee, the position of the mayor of Troisdorf is “simply irresponsible”. “It's about Ukraine, but also and above all about Germany's security,” she complained to Agence France-Presse.
The mayor of Troisdorf remains insensitive to national pressure for the time being and he is not the only one who is resisting. This summer, the Rheinmetall Group, another flagship of the German defense industry that has supplied numerous pieces of equipment to Ukraine, said it would abandon construction of a gunpowder factory in the Saxony region in the east of the country. “Germany.” The project had raised concerns among the local population.