Against vehement resistance from the opposition, the Bavarian state parliament has paved the way for the simplified payment of aid from a hardship fund for those affected by the energy crisis. On Thursday, parliament approved a corresponding emergency motion with the votes of the governing parties CSU and Free Voters. This enables the fund, which was only partially approved by the cabinet, to be paid out with a volume of 1.5 billion euros via an emergency approval right and thus without further participation by the state parliament. The opposition had vehemently attacked the government for this. The procedure bypasses Parliament and is not legally tenable, said the budget expert for the Greens, Claudia Köhler.
With the emergency approval right that has now been passed instead of the supplementary budget demanded by the opposition, the government can more easily make expenditures within the framework of the hardship fund. They only have to be presented to the budget committee and not discussed in the plenary session of the state parliament. The SPD budget expert Harald Güller therefore criticized that the participation of the opposition was curtailed. No motions could be formulated, which significantly curtailed parliamentary design options.
Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) contradicted: “It is by no means our intention to bypass the state parliament – on the contrary: the budget committee can agree, it can reject, it can decide with stipulations, it can make its own proposals. So the state parliament is full involved.”
The fund is intended to supplement the federal government’s hardship aid. The CSU politician Michael Hofmann emphasized that these are still unclear, which is why Bavaria has not yet been able to set clear budget titles for individual items. Opposition politicians had previously accused the government of the hardship fund being in fact a package of government campaign gifts to be distributed in the 2023 election year for purposes that could benefit the governing parties. Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) said about arguments about bypassing Parliament: “I reject these allegations with the utmost determination.”
The Greens politician Claudia Köhler said that the state government had deliberately delayed the submission of the 2023 budget to the state parliament. Nevertheless, the emergency permit law that has now been decided is a “clear breach of the law”. According to the law, it may only be used in the event of unforeseeable events. This is not the case, the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war and its consequences have been known for months.