Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) has defended the planned billions in the budget restructuring against sharp criticism. “It is by no means about financing general projects of the traffic light coalition,” he emphasized in the Bundestag. Instead, he gives a clear promise that the money will only be used to cushion the damage caused by the corona pandemic. Due to the crisis, many investments were not possible recently, which now urgently need to be made up. “We mustn’t lose time with the transformation due to the pandemic,” said Lindner.
The finance minister plans to reallocate 60 billion euros in loans in the budget so that they do not expire at the end of the year, but can continue to be used in the years to come. The loans approved for 2021 but not used are to be put on the high edge in a climate and transformation fund, so to speak. The money will then be used for climate protection and digitization.
According to Lindner, the next few years will be about a balancing act between more investments in climate protection and digitization, but also about complying with the debt brake from 2023 on again. “Both are binding for the federal government.”
The Union, as the largest opposition party in the new Bundestag, asked Lindner to withdraw the supplementary budget. The CDU politician Christian Haase spoke of “sleight of hand”. Corona loans would be turned into climate loans that had nothing to do with the pandemic. “I think the supplementary budget is unconstitutional.” The debt brake anchored in the Basic Law, which has been suspended due to the Corona crisis, is being weakened. The Union parliamentary group wants to have the budget examined by the Federal Constitutional Court.
In 2020 the grand coalition reallocated money
The project had already aroused criticism from the ranks of the opposition before the debate. CDU politician Helge Braun, for example, sharply criticized the supplementary budget of the traffic light coalition. The former head of the Chancellery said on Deutschlandfunk: “This is going to be a very serious debate today because we are very worried. This is a very fundamental break with budgetary solidity in Germany that we are currently experiencing.”
The Union criticizes that adherence to the debt brake should be bought at the cost of early debts. The criticism is also interesting against the background of the 2020 budget. At that time, the old federal government from the Union and SPD had reallocated 27 billion euros – and the FDP had criticized that.