energy crisis
Countries still need to negotiate the relief package
The state budget of the state of Baden-Württemberg for the year 2022 – the states still need to negotiate on the co-financing of the federal government’s relief package. photo
© Marijan Murat/dpa
The federal states and municipalities are to support the federal government with a total of almost 20 billion euros a year in order to at least partially absorb the high cost of living for consumers. Does it work?
The federal states want to co-finance the federal government’s third relief package on the energy crisis, but report the need for negotiations because of the cost sharing.
According to the previous plans, states and municipalities should contribute a total of almost 20 billion annually, said the chairwoman of the finance ministers’ conference and Rhineland-Palatinate finance minister Doris Ahnen (SPD) after a meeting with her state colleagues in Berlin. “The budgets of the federal states cannot raise such amounts without there being a lasting impairment of the financing of the other necessary tasks.”
At the beginning of September, the traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP decided on a third relief package worth 65 billion euros for 2022 and 2023, in which the federal states should also participate. Ahnen spoke of an annual volume of around 40 billion euros for the years 2023 and 2024, of which the federal states and municipalities should contribute almost half. According to the finance minister, the federal states alone will face costs totaling a good 28 billion euros over the next two years. On September 28, the prime ministers want to talk to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) about financing.
“The finance ministers of the federal states have jointly determined that the federal states have a legitimate right to a fair distribution of the costs of the measures planned by the federal government,” said Ahnen. It must now be a question of “agreing on a fair distribution of the burden” in negotiations with the federal government.
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