The federal government has approved its supplementary budget for 2023 earlier than planned. The draft by Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) was actually only supposed to be decided on Wednesday, but the traffic light coalition members have now agreed to adopt the budget by circulation – i.e. without a prior meeting. “It’s about healing a legal violation that would occur if we didn’t do anything now,” says the Finance Ministry.
The condition for the supplementary budget is that the Bundestag declares an exceptional emergency situation with which the debt brake can be suspended. The federal government is likely to argue with the high energy prices and the consequences of the Russian attack on Ukraine – as it did last year. The decision is intended to legally secure loans worth around 45 billion euros, which have already been used to curb energy prices and to support flood victims.
The reason for the hastily written supplementary budget is the ruling from Karlsruhe from the week before last. The Federal Constitutional Court prohibited the traffic light from reallocating money for climate protection that was actually intended to combat the consequences of the Corona crisis. Experts assume that the 2023 budget could also be unconstitutional: The government used funds from the Climate Fund (KTF) and the Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF), but postponed the loans to 2022 – the year in which the Debt brake was suspended. Karlsruhe also banned this booking technique.
Finance Minister Lindner froze the KTF on the day of the verdict, and last week he announced that he would no longer use the WSF either. The brakes on electricity and gas prices are financed from the WSF.