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Budget dispute at traffic lights
Gastro tax increase – Mützenich accuses Lindner of wrongdoing
SPD parliamentary group leader Mützenich: Attack on FDP Finance Minister Lindner
© Kay Nietfeld / DPA
The traffic lights don’t stop. SPD parliamentary group leader Mützenich accuses the finance minister of… star wrong play in budget policy: “Fair cooperation looks different.” The background is the new gastro tax plans.
There is a row in the traffic light coalition over the plan to phase out the reduced VAT in the catering industry. SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich accuses Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) of publicly providing false information about the background to the decision. “It is a mystery to me why the finance minister is suddenly distancing himself from joint decisions on the upcoming budget,” Mützenich told the star. “Fair cooperation looks different. We also found an amicable solution to reduce VAT in the catering industry. Mr. Lindner then unilaterally removed this topic from the agenda.”
Lindner In the “Bild am Sonntag” newspaper, the SPD and the Greens were responsible for the new catering regulations. “If all parties had pulled together, a further extension would have been possible,” said the FDP politician. In doing so, he suggested that he himself would have liked to extend the reduced VAT rate in the catering industry and had failed due to resistance from his coalition partners. Lindner’s statements caused irritation among the SPD and the Greens.
What happens next after the Karlsruhe verdict?
The new dispute comes amid the difficult debate over how the coalition deals with the recent ruling from Karlsruhe, which annulled the funding of the Climate and Transformation Fund. The Federal Constitutional Court’s decision has torn a hole of 60 billion euros in the traffic light government’s plans. It is currently completely unclear whether the gap can be closed or whether individual projects may have to be deleted from the climate fund. At the weekend she had SPD-Spitz once again brought an exception to the debt brake into play in order to prevent central components of the transformation projects from coming to an end.
There had already been irritation about Lindner at the weekend. The reduced gastro VAT was a crisis aid that would have been canceled this year due to the decisions of the grand coalition. He was able to prevent that for 2023, said Lindner.
The Greens publicly contradicted this. We are negotiating a budget together, said deputy group leader Andreas Audretsch. “In a difficult budgetary situation, there were many questions and suggestions on the table. We make decisions together at the traffic lights. It is not good form if the finance minister no longer wants to have anything to do with the decisions.”
The VAT on food in the catering industry was reduced from 19 to 7 percent during the pandemic in order to support the industry. Due to the energy crisis, the regulation was extended until the end of this year.