Germany overhauls foreign office amid major humanitarian budget cuts

The German government will carry out a major restructuring of its Federal Foreign Office, after the newly approved budget maintains the more than 50% cut in funding for humanitarian aid, originally made in the 2025 budget. The government funds for humanitarian aid dropped by 53% from 2024 to 2025. Last week, the 2026 budget confirmed that the budget would essentially remain the same, decreasing by a further 0.1%. The 2026 budget is the first of the new government, formed in May. Experts had hoped to see an increase in the humanitarian allocation, if not a return to the previous amount, especially after the government said in its coalition agreement that it would “strengthen humanitarian aid and provide it in a reliable, targeted, and forward-looking manner.” “This budget for next year was the first one that the new government could write on their own,” Ralf Südhoff, director of the Centre for Humanitarian Action, a German think tank, told Devex. “The decision not to do this is a really clear signal that [humanitarian aid] is not a priority.” During a speech in Parliament, Johann Wadephul, the federal minister for foreign affairs in Germany, said the cuts signified a “deplorable state of affairs” and announced a comprehensive internal restructuring of the Federal Foreign Office due to the constraints it is facing. A new foreign office Overall, 570 positions are expected to be cut from the Foreign Office, according to reporting by the German newspaper Die Zeit. In a different internal memo seen by Devex, the Foreign Office said that it will need to cut around 8% of jobs and that the cuts are likely to be made at the headquarters in Berlin rather than at German embassies abroad. The memo lays out the full restructuring plan, which will include a new department for security policy that focuses on cyber foreign policy, cybersecurity, arms export control, and disarmament. The stabilization department, known as Department S — which is responsible for all crisis-related programs, including humanitarian aid, crisis prevention, and stabilization — will be dissolved. The Foreign Office will put more resources towards its regional offices in order to make in-country management “more targeted and effective,” according to the memo. There will be four departments: Europe, America, Asia and Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. These departments will be responsible for the humanitarian and crisis prevention tasks of Department S, foreign cultural and educational policy. This geographical division is meant to “significantly reduce previous thematic overlaps and the associated coordination effort,” according to the memo. But experts are concerned that it is more likely to reduce the expertise needed and that combining it with other regional issues will politicize humanitarian aid. “The increasing focus of German foreign policy on security and economic interests not only carries the risk of humanitarian aid being exploited for political ends, but also jeopardizes Germany's credibility in countries that are in urgent need of humanitarian aid,” said Oliver Müller, international director of Caritas International, in a statement. Humanitarian aid took such a big hit within the Foreign Office cuts because it is one of the few voluntary parts of the office’s budget, said Südhoff, unlike salaries, rent, or mandatory contributions to peace operations and international organizations. Traditionally, the government signals cuts early in the year, the Foreign Office applies them to humanitarian aid, and then the government restores a portion of the funding just before the budget is finalized. But Südhoff explained that many expected this familiar political pattern to rescue the 2025 and 2026 budgets, only for parliamentarians to abandon support for such last-minute reversals. This year’s unusually severe proposed cuts meant that even in the best scenario, only a modest top-up would have been possible — and ultimately, it never came. All eyes inward As money to crisis-ridden countries contracts, the Foreign Office is turning more attention to its neighbors, establishing an EU Policy and Geoeconomics Department, which will focus on European Union issues, policies, and coordination on trade, connectivity, climate, and critical minerals. “They will prioritize regions with a strong geopolitical relevance for Germany,” said Südhoff. “They will prioritize Ukraine, everything migration related, and everything which is of relevance for economic relations, like raw materials.” The rhetoric coming out of the Foreign Office, despite Wadephul’s dissatisfaction with the budget, is similar to that of Germany’s development ministry, known as the BMZ. In October, the ministry published a plan showing that it is strategically refocusing its efforts on economic cooperation and private partnerships that will aim to benefit the German economy. This is, in part, a response to the declining German economy and the rise in popularity of the far-right wing populist group Alternative for Germany, or AFD. Germany has had one of the weakest economic recoveries of high-income countries since the COVID-19 pandemic. Just one piece of the puzzle Overall, the government is taking on a significant amount of new debt — expanding from 502.5 billion euros ($586.3 billion) to 524.5 billion euros ($610.72 billion) and borrowing 97.9 billion euros to do so. This is a significant shift from Germany’s fiscal frugality of the last decades and was largely spurred by a call to arms by the United States almost a year ago. There is concern among the Foreign Office and development officials that siphoning funding from foreign humanitarian work into defense could ultimately increase the threats Germany faces. “A federal budget that creates 180 billion euros in new debt must also take into account that major tasks await us in the humanitarian field,” Wadephul said in the budget session. “It's about preventing the causes of flight and also protecting economic interests.”