BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – According to its parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Christian Dürr, the FDP is firmly committed to the debt brake after the Karlsruhe budget ruling. “I am aware that the FDP is rather alone with its very clear stance that the debt brake must remain firmly in the Basic Law,” he said on Sunday evening in the ZDF program “Berlin Direkt”. But that is a reason to remain part of the traffic light coalition. It was known that the SPD and the Greens had a different opinion on the issue. But he is surprised at some of the statements from the Union family and also from prime ministers, “who say that the debt brake has to be removed and given way.” He thinks that’s wrong.
The CDU state leaders in Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony had recently shown themselves to be open to reforming the debt brake. Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff, for example, told “Stern” that the debt brake must remain. “But for very important future investments in business, technology and science, constitutionally compliant ways must be found to realize them.”
Dürr said on Sunday that there was no income problem at the federal and state levels, but rather a spending problem. The federal government will now negotiate where savings can be made.
After the Karlsruhe budget ruling, there is a big gap in the budget. The Federal Constitutional Court had declared a reallocation of loans worth 60 billion euros in the 2021 budget to be null and void. That’s why the traffic light coalition wants to use the debt brake exemption this year. Lindner announced on Thursday that he would present a supplementary budget to the cabinet next week. The federal government will propose to the Bundestag to declare an exceptional emergency. This means that loans that have already been used this year will subsequently be legally secured./csd/DP/men