Land now wants to use funds earmarked for companies for education, retail and culture.
. The investment fund of the state, which is fed by the green-black state government with one billion euros, has not yet found any buyers. Green parliamentary group leader Andreas Schwarz therefore advocates reallocating the funds in favor of education, retail and culture. The opposition criticizes the project.
“We should use the funds to finance the immediate Corona program agreed in the coalition negotiations. We are not taking anything away from anyone,” said Schwarz. The Immediate Program will invest in programs to catch up on student learner backlogs, as well as a restart program for retail, downtown and culture.
The state launched the investment fund in December 2020 in order to be able to help corona-stricken companies with at least 50 and a maximum of 250 employees as silent partners or by granting subordinated loans. Until the beginning of this week, not a single euro has been paid out. Reserves can also be found in the pots of the state’s corona aid for the hospitality industry: of the 330 million euros approved for this, almost 120 million have been called up so far, said the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
“The government should have made sure that the investment fund leads to results in the interests of the economy,” complained FDP parliamentary group leader Hans-Ulrich Rülke: “Apparently a billion euros was stashed, now we have a shadow budget.” Education should not be played off against securing jobs, criticized the parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Sascha Binder. Playing economic and educational policy off against each other is “infamous”, said AfD parliamentary group leader Bernd Gögel.
The position of the coalition partner CDU is more relevant to the advance of the Green Black than the criticism of the opposition. The CDU wants to secure the free funds at least partially for the economy and discuss them in the coalition as soon as possible. The country is facing huge challenges in many areas, especially in education, but is also in the midst of a huge economic transformation process, said CDU parliamentary group leader Manuel Hagel. A spokeswoman for Economics Minister Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (CDU) said: “In our opinion, the focus of a restart program must of course be on the economy.”
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