Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann is calling for special funds for urgently needed investments in infrastructure. “We need the possibility of building up a special fund through loans that can only be used for very specific investment purposes,” the Green politician told the German Press Agency in Stuttgart. Kretschmann cited the construction of a hydrogen network as an example, which must be addressed urgently.
Kretschmann explained the hydrogen network: “We have almost no green hydrogen today, that is still a thing of the future. But there is no doubt that it will come. Then you need these networks and whoever doesn’t have them will immediately run into enormous competition problems,” said Kretschmann. But because there will only be relevant quantities of green hydrogen in ten years, there will be no returns from investments in the network until then. “For this we need the opportunity to take out loans that can be repaid over a relatively long period of time.”
Kretschmann said he was not at all in favor of loosening the debt brake in general. It was an important achievement and was intended to protect future generations from excessive debt and interest burdens. “But the debt brake must not become a brake on the future. If important investments are not made, this will also harm the next generation,” said the Green politician.
Critical voices from the Union
Kretschmann’s idea of a special fund for hydrogen and rail is being rejected by the Union. “If you can’t get the cost side of the budget under control, special funds are of no use,” commented the parliamentary manager of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei, in the “Rheinische Post”. The main issue now is “shifting the priorities in the federal budget towards more investment in infrastructure”. That also means that savings will have to be made on social benefits or development aid.
Investments in hydrogen and the rail network are essential, said FDP parliamentary group leader Hans-Ulrich Rülke. “But this does not require a weakening of the debt brake. The left-wing and green opponents of sound budgeting are thus blindly sacrificing fiscal sustainability in favor of ecological sustainability.”
SPD parliamentary group leader Andreas Stoch said that Baden-Württemberg does not have a debt problem, but a growth problem. “The Prime Minister therefore has our full support when it comes to investing money and making our state and our economy future-proof.” Kretschmann will be in office for almost two more years. There are enough opportunities to set up a special fund.
The debt brake was enshrined in the Basic Law in 2009 after the global financial crisis. According to this, the federal and state governments are no longer allowed to balance their budget deficits by taking out loans.
