How should Hamburg spend 36 billion euros? The debate is on

Finance Senator Dressel brings budget 2021/22 to the citizenship. One billion euros are planned for climate protection alone.

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Hamburg. “There is not only the danger of doing too much, but also the danger of doing too little.” This remarkable sentence from the Court of Auditors on Monday has become a reality Finance Senator Andreas Dressel (SPD) promptly adopted it and thus on Wednesday the Consultation of the citizens on the new budget Opened in 2021/22.

The claim of the red-green Senate is “to guarantee crisis management and future design, investing and consolidation equally – and that under unprecedented framework conditions”, said Dressel. The draft budget is “fair to the generations” because it adheres to the debt brake, which also proves to be “crisis-proof”. The Hamburg regulation allows the surpluses generated in previous years and mainly used in debt repayment to be used in the form of loans to combat the crisis.

Budget 2021/22: 36 billion – and 4.1 billion new loans

The budget for 2021/22 has a volume of almost 36 billion euros for both years together. Due to the enormous slump in tax revenues, a net borrowing of around 4.1 billion euros is planned. These loans are to be repaid from 2025 onwards. Dressel not only highlighted the enormous means of crisis management. In addition, large sums of money would continue to be invested in education, childcare, housing and science. For climate protection alone, the city will spend more than a billion euros, including more than 550 million for expanding the underground and suburban railway network.

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CDU financial expert Thilo Kleibauer said it was “right not to save against the crisis”. But the Senate should not use that as an “excuse” to fulfill every wish in every situation. Many projects that have been planned for a long time and have nothing to do with fighting the crisis are now being financed through Corona emergency loans, which is “negligent”, said Kleibauer. Anna von Treuenfels-Frowein (FDP) struck in the same line: “Cycle paths, as useful as I find them, cannot be financed with emergency loans.”

Debt brake: Left criticizes Senate’s “discouragement”

CDU politician Kleibauer also demanded more specific statements from the Senate as to where and how he would like to save around 250 million euros annually from 2023 – the city’s room for maneuver will be less in this size. The fact that the Senate has so far only required the authorities to reduce their expenses by three percent is a “short-term booking trick,” says Kleibauer: “Here risks are being postponed to future years.”

David Stoop, budget expert for the Left Party, also “expressly” welcomed the fact that additional funds would even be made available during the crisis. But he criticized the Senate’s “discouragement” because it was sticking to the debt brake. The Greens should take an example from their federal chairman Robert Habeck, who wants to loosen the ban on debt. Thomas Reich (AfD) criticized the Senate investing in climate protection during the crisis. People are afraid of losing their jobs and don’t need new bike paths.

SPD calls for more support from the federal government

Dennis Paustian-Döscher (Greens) emphasized exactly the opposite: “Hamburg will only be successful if it combats both crises,” the corona and climate crises, said the budget spokesman. He recalled that 2020 in Hamburg had been the warmest and driest year since the weather began and that there had been no permafrost for more than 700 days. It is therefore right to invest more than a billion in climate protection.

Milan Pein (SPD) took up the words of the Finance Senator and called for more support from the federal government: “This crisis will have an impact on the Hamburg budget and the income side for a long time to come. The federal government must not leave the federal states alone in this. “The new budget should actually have been approved by the end of 2020. However, due to the formation of the red-green Senate after the election and the corona pandemic, the preparation was delayed planned for the middle of the year.

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