The Bundestag reacts to the Karlsruhe budget ruling and declares an extraordinary emergency situation. The debt brake has been suspended and the supplementary budget for 2023 has been approved.
On Friday, the Bundestag approved an exception to the debt brake for the 2023 financial year and the supplementary budget. In this way, Parliament is reacting to the Karlsruhe budget ruling and is subsequently legally securing loans that have already been taken out.
The planned new debt is therefore 70.6 billion euros – 44.8 billion euros above the permitted borrowing. The Bundestag suspended the debt brake for the fourth time in a row. The federal government is also raising the CO₂ price. You can read more information about this here.
The Union previously expressed constitutional concerns with regard to the traffic light government’s supplementary budget for the current year. An incorrect booking system is still being used in parts of the budget, said parliamentary group vice-president Mathias Middelberg (CDU) in the Bundestag. “And that’s why constitutional concerns remain about your supplementary budget today.”
The supplementary budget is to be passed today. The Federal Audit Office also considers it to be unconstitutional. The question is at what point in time loans are counted towards the debt brake: when they are approved or when they are actually taken out.
“That’s not a good compromise”
CDU politician Middelberg also didn’t give a damn about the traffic light coalition’s agreement for the 2024 budget year. “That’s not a good compromise for this country. It’s more of an attempt to mend the crack in their traffic lights,” he said. The agreement is a rescue package for the traffic light government. “Unfortunately it’s nothing more.”
The main component is “massive tax and levy increases”. Middelberg called, among other things, for the introduction of climate money as set out in the coalition agreement. “That would have been the decisive step towards social equalization,” he said. The traffic light coalition had intended climate money as social compensation for increasing climate protection burdens on citizens, but it has not yet been implemented.
Coalition defends supplementary budget
The parliamentary groups in the traffic light government have defended the supplementary budget for the current year and the compromise on the 2024 budget. “With the supplementary budget, we are now implementing the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court for 2023,” said Green Sven-Christian Kindler, head of the Budget Working Group, in the Bundestag. FDP householder Otto Fricke said: “This is a budget policy as it should be.” With a view to the 2024 budget, he spoke of a sensible compromise from the coalition.
The supplementary budget is a consequence of the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court. The highest German court had decided that the federal government was not allowed to reserve emergency loans for later years. That’s exactly what the traffic light government did with the energy price brakes and flood aid. Now Parliament wants to put the budget on a legally secure footing.
The prerequisite is that Parliament declares an emergency and thus suspends the debt brake anchored in the Basic Law. “If there is a war on the European continent, if a person like Vladimir Putin thinks that he can put his power interests above the integrity of states on the European continent, then that is never a normal situation,” argued SPD householder Dennis Rohde.
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Debt brake: reform commission called for
Baden-Württemberg’s Finance Minister Daniel Bayaz (Greens) and Berlin’s Finance Senator Stefan Evers (CDU) are campaigning for a reform commission for the debt brake. This should be made up of representatives from the federal government, states and science in order to further develop the debt brake, the two politicians write in a guest article that appeared in the “Tagesspiegel”.
The two state politicians consider an investment rule as part of the debt brake to be a conceivable part of a possible reform. “This would make it possible to finance additional investments with loans, for example with a view to the challenges of transformation,” says the guest article. “A new exception to the debt rule must not lead to new scope being created for consumptive or non-targeted spending by making the concept of investment politically charged.”
