Status: 10/19/2021 10:20 a.m.
According to the Greens leader Baerbock, negotiations for a possible traffic light coalition should begin at the end of the week. When it comes to financing future projects, the Greens and the SPD are apparently on the same wavelength.
The Green leader Annalena Baerbock expects the coalition negotiations between her party and the SPD and FDP to begin at the end of the week. “It will start now at the end of the week,” she said together Morning magazine from ARD and ZDF. “Very, very many” working groups will be set up to work on the individual specialist topics. However, she has not yet given an exact date for the negotiations.
Baerbock also insisted that the contents of a possible traffic light coalition would first have to be tied down before the distribution of the ministries could be discussed. The background to this are public demands from FDP politicians that party leader Christian Lindner should become finance minister. However, Green politicians had also claimed the department for their party. Baerbock kept a low profile on plans for a climate ministry, but said: “It cannot be that one ministry tries and ten work against it. It has to be a climate government.”
Baerbock and Walter-Borjans for borrowing
Baerbock contradicted the impression that the FDP in particular had prevailed in the exploratory paper. It is clear that the Greens landed well ahead of the FDP in the federal elections. Your party has anchored the path to comply with the 1.5-degree climate protection goal. The coal exit law will be reopened and the coal exit will be brought forward. In addition, socio-political reforms such as a revision of citizenship law had been agreed.
In order to be able to finance the projects of a possible traffic light coalition, Baerbock pleaded for borrowing permitted in the debt brake. “We assume that we will need 50 billion euros annually to tackle future tasks and to modernize the country,” said the Greens leader. Any company can take out a loan from the bank if the machine used to manufacture the product is broken . “It is the same in serious financial policy.”
The SPD chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans had previously spoken out in favor of partial financing with loans. “The finances have to be deposited, of course,” he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “When investing in the future, partial financing with loans is justified.” The debt brake contains “definitely leeway” for this. In addition, there are the possibilities of state institutions such as the federal and state development banks, said the SPD boss.
Finances are likely to be the crux of the matter
After the SPD and the Greens, the FDP also voted on Monday to start intensive talks on the formation of the first traffic light government at the federal level. So far, the SPD, Greens and FDP had conducted exploratory talks in order to sound out commonalities and differences without obligation. The finances are considered to be one of the sticking points of the upcoming negotiations.
According to the parties’ exploratory paper, investments in the future are to be made possible “within the framework of the constitutional debt brake”. However, the three parties have so far left open how the necessary investments are to be financed.