Hitschler central in new German Chancellor Scholz’s military-security policy

Despite her relative inexperience, since coming to office earlier this month, Germany’s new defence minister Christine Lambrecht, of the SPD party, has wasted no time in launching a review of the German armed forces’ missions abroad. While Lambrecht has a consensus profile, new Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s choice of Thomas Hitschler as secretary of state sends a strong message to the intelligence agencies.

More transparency

A member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, the PKGr, Hitschler has been an advocate of a more transparent intelligence community, particularly where the BND in concerned. The external intelligence service is still dealing with the perception among its Western partner services that it cannot be trusted to protect information shared with it, following numerous leaks that marred the work of the Bundestag’s investigative committee, following Edward Snowden’s revelations.

Hitschler is also very involved in foreign policy. In 2018, he expressed support for the embargo on arms to Turkey, prompting anger from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2017, he signed an open letter to NATO calling for dialogue with Russia to be kept open.

A member of the Franco-German parliamentary group, Hitschler also wants to see more defence cooperation between Germany and France. However the French are still upset about the increasingly poltical nature of Germany’s policy on military exports of sensitive components, including those for French export contracts.

Parliamentary monitoring

As well as the government, the new balance of power in the Bundestag (German parliament) in the wake of the elections is also under scrutiny. The right-wing nationalist AfD party obtained the chair of the internal policy committee, which keeps tabs on the work of the BfV, the internal intelligence service, in monitoring violent extremism. Indeed several members of the AfD are being monitored by the service themselves