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The federal budget is Lindner’s most important task in the government – but it is still not set for 2025. (Photo current) © Claudius Pflug/ZDF/dpa
The budget is becoming a permanent construction site for the traffic light coalition. Negotiations are to continue until the middle of the month, says the finance minister. Billions are still at stake.
Berlin – Finance Minister Christian Lindner still sees a funding gap of around five billion euros in the federal budget for next year after the recent turbulence. However, there is still plenty of time to find a viable solution, the FDP chairman stressed in a summer interview on the ZDF program “Berlin direct”. He will be consulting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) until the middle of the month, after which the draft budget will go to the Bundestag, where it is expected to be approved at the end of November.
In fact, the three traffic light coalition leaders had already announced at the beginning of July that they had found a compromise on the budget. They had previously struggled for weeks to close a gap of at least 30 billion euros. Now they have managed to do so without having to resort to overly harsh austerity measures.
But Lindner had already expressed doubts about several projects and had them examined in terms of constitutionality and economics. Last week’s examination revealed legal risks, particularly in the plan to use the remaining 4.9 billion euros from the KfW development bank for the gas price caps for other purposes in the budget. The plan to pay loans instead of subsidies to the motorway company could also be problematic.
Are new debts necessary?
Lindner has therefore announced a need for further talks – and has drawn displeasure from the coalition partners SPD and Greens. They have criticized the finance minister for burying his head in the sand instead of facing up to his responsibilities and finding a solution. The SPD in particular is relying on declaring an emergency because of the war in Ukraine and taking out additional loans. This is permitted in exceptional cases within the framework of the debt brake. The FDP is strictly against higher loans.
There are economic reasons for this, said Lindner in the summer interview. The federal government must learn to manage with its revenues of almost a trillion euros. “Because for every million new debts, citizens pay interest and repayments. These are not gifts.” In addition, Germany must comply with European debt rules. In his view, deliberately breaking these rules would be an invitation to other European countries to take on more debt than they can sustain.
Lindner drew a red line for the upcoming budget negotiations with “tax increases for the working middle class.” It is not about saving, but about reallocating funds for the right purposes.
Söder: “Federal budget full of holes like Swiss cheese”
The opposition is taking a hard line against the traffic light coalition because of the new dispute. “The traffic light coalition cannot govern seriously, the chaos continues,” said Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder to the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. “The federal budget is full of holes like Swiss cheese, there are open questions and bad checks everywhere.”
CSU budget politician Sebastian Brehm spoke of “political botching on a serial basis”. “With serious will, the government can and must make do with its income – especially if at the same time debt is taken up to the limit,” he stressed.
