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BERLIN/MAINZ (dpa-AFX) – The federal states want to co-finance the federal government’s third relief package for the energy crisis, but report a need for negotiations because of the cost sharing. According to the previous plans, states and municipalities should contribute a total of 20 billion annually, said the chairwoman of the conference of finance ministers and Rhineland-Palatinate finance minister Doris Ahnen (SPD) on Thursday 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, in which the federal states should also participate. Ahnen spoke of a volume of over 40 billion euros, of which the states and municipalities together should contribute half. 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./hus/DP/stw