The two Andys guarding Europe’s largest defence budget
German lawmakers Andreas Mattfeldt and Andreas Schwarz can block arms procurement contracts worth €25mn or more
Some of the most powerful, yet least visible, people in Europe’s rearmament drive are two German lawmakers who share the same first name: Andreas.
As members of the Bundestag budget committee for the parties in Germany’s ruling coalition, Andreas Mattfeldt and Andreas Schwarz can approve or block any military procurement contract worth more than €25mn.
In recent months, they have become more assertive, vetoing contracts or demanding cuts to their value. Their interventions have frustrated officials pushing to modernise the Bundeswehr after decades of under-investment, and also some of their fellow MPs.
Mattfeldt, a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democrats, says the committee’s role is to provide proper checks and balances as Berlin prepares to spend €780bn on defence by 2030.
“We have made a paradigm shift, because we are responsible for huge sums of money the taxpayer has entrusted to us,” Mattfeldt said in an interview from his Bundestag office, whose walls are adorned with large prints of warships and fighter jets.
“I want us to be able to say that we have contributed to the Bundeswehr getting the best equipment — at the best price.”
The Bundestag budget committee’s unusual authority over defence contracts dates back to 1981. The German parliament, angered by cost overruns on projects including the Tornado fighter jet programme, stipulated that all projects worth 50 million Deutschmarks or more must be approved by MPs.
It also reflects the military’s place in postwar Germany. The Bundeswehr, created in 1955 to replace Adolf Hitler’s disbanded Wehrmacht, was conceived as a “parliamentary army” under tight Bundestag oversight. To this day, the government cannot deploy troops outside Nato territory without parliamentary approval.
In total, there are five lawmakers on the budget committee who are responsible for defence spending: one from each of the main parties in the Bundestag, including the far-right AfD. But since Mattfeldt and Schwarz represent the government’s parliamentary majority, it is up to them to thrash out key decisions.
They say they have few disagreements. “Not only do we have the same first name, we also have a similar CV,” said Schwarz. As former mayors, they are both used to pragmatism and compromise. “We don’t meddle in ideology, we use normal common sense,” he said.
Some other MPs and their staffers jokingly refer to the pair as “the two Andys”. They themselves have come up with their own nickname: the A-Team. “That’s because Andreas and I really work well together,” said Mattfeldt.
Their workload has increased dramatically since 2022, when Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered Germany’s rearmament drive. In December, they approved more than €50bn worth of purchases in a single sitting.
But they have also been willing to put the brakes on defence minister Boris Pistorius’s plans. In January, they vetoed a proposal to award a €600mn contract for a mobile reconnaissance system to Munich-based Rohde & Schwarz without a competitive tender. A month later, they blocked another planned direct award: a €462mn deal for Rheinmetall and European missile maker MBDA to build a laser system designed to protect ships from drones.
In February, they also slashed the maximum value of three contracts to buy kamikaze drones, forcing the government to come back to the committee if they wanted to exceed €1bn per supplier. And, in April, they blocked the purchase of 900 mobile diesel containers for the Bundeswehr after spotting that the price had doubled compared with a previous purchase from the same supplier five years ago.
Christopher Wolters, a defence procurement specialist at Berlin law firm Blomstein, said the committee had become more important as government efforts to speed up military procurement curtailed companies’ ability to challenge decisions through judicial review.
“The committee has become an increasingly important avenue for industry to challenge the award of contracts — and a counterweight to the ministry of defence,” he said.
One government official said the €25mn threshold — which was originally set at 50mn Deutschmarks and has never been adjusted for inflation — was “completely out of step with the times.” He added that blocking procurement awards was detrimental to soldiers because they “lose valuable time”.
A German defence insider put it even more strongly. Mattfeldt and Schwarz, he said, were “pissing everyone off: the ministry, the procurement agency, the Bundeswehr, industry”. He added: “You can make some enemies in politics but you can’t piss off everyone — it won’t last.”
While Mattfeldt said he could imagine lifting the €25mn threshold to €50mn, he said it would only happen “if we parliamentarians decide it ourselves”.
A spokesperson for the German defence ministry said: “Parliamentary involvement in large-scale procurement projects is an important instrument of oversight in our democracy.”
Others worry that, rather than antagonising industry, the committee’s power leaves it vulnerable to lobbying and conflicts of interest at a time when the defence sector is awash with money.
German weekly Die Zeit last year reported that Blackned, which later became a subsidiary of the arms giant Rheinmetall, offered donations of up to €2,000 to eight MPs in the lead-up to elections. It was not clear how many accepted, or if any of them were on the budget committee.
Rheinmetall said the company’s compliance policy did not apply to Blackned “at the time in question”, when it only owned a minority stake. “Nevertheless, Blackned wholeheartedly supports centrist democratic parties,” it said, adding that donations were always made to parties, not individuals, and that the sums were “within very manageable limits”. “No specific expectations regarding any political decisions are attached to these donations,” they said.
Sebastian Schäfer, the Greens’ representative on the committee, said he was “shocked” to find out about the donations and that “it didn’t seem to be a big deal for some of my colleagues”.
The drone start-up Helsing also made campaign donations of €30,000 to four parties, including the CDU. It said the move was intended to bolster democratic parties at a time of growing support for the far right. The Greens turned down the offer.
Schwarz, who has been a budget committee member since 2017, said he had “never, ever witnessed a situation where the issue of being corrupted was ever a factor”. He added: “I simply haven’t seen it happen — nor has anyone, to my knowledge, even dared to suggest it. I also firmly believe that we have the mechanisms in place to prevent anything of that nature.”
The budget committee MPs irritate some fellow lawmakers, who accuse them of straying beyond their expertise by second-guessing the defence ministry and procurement office — weighing not just the cost of weapons, but whether they should be bought at all.
Some members of the Bundestag’s defence committee are upset by what they say is a perceived expectation to rubber-stamp whatever their colleagues on the budget committee decide. Those MPs are pushing for the whole process to be overhauled.
Both Andys shrug off the barbs that fly their way. “No one takes it personally,” said Schwarz, with a smile. “Everyone has their role.”