The SPD actually wanted to complete its planning for the party conference. But then news broke that the budget talks had failed. Uncertainty is growing among the SPD and the Greens.
Kevin Kühnert is late.
The SPD announced a hall tour of the Berlin CityCube on Thursday, planned to start at 3:45 p.m. But the SPD general secretary didn’t arrive until half an hour later and didn’t give any reasons.
It could have been a routine appointment: a short walk through the premises, making a statement, answering a question or two, sprinkling a bit of SPD folklore and getting in the mood for the three-day party conference.
But the budget crisis hangs over the meeting like a bad omen. For more than three weeks now, the traffic light has been looking for a way out of the government crisis following the Karlsruhe ruling. It is still unclear how the budget gap of 17 billion euros can be closed. And now, of all times, the next blow: A message was passed around among SPD representatives on Thursday that confirmed the disaster that had been looming for days.
Biggest traffic light crisis in history not resolved
“Olaf, R. Habeck and Ch. Lindner have not yet been able to bring their intensive discussions to a conclusion,” wrote the SPD’s parliamentary managing director, Katja Mast, to her colleagues. As a result, the 2024 budget “can no longer be decided on time this year”. This is how the message that t-online has available ends.
In other words: The traffic light was unable to solve its biggest crisis in history in time, and the federal government will slip into provisional budget management from January 1, 2024. All the hopes and incantations of the last few days, the warnings about the drastic consequences for the country – it has been of no use.
But Kevin Kühnert doesn’t show anything this Thursday. The new bad news in SMS form shouldn’t ruin the tour of the hall, he may have thought. Wearing tight jeans and black boots, Kühnert guides the press entourage through the empty hall, stops at a wall that is supposed to be a reminder of successful government (“Housing benefit: increased”, “Energy prices: slowed”), and poses next to the man-sized SPD logo on the Stage.
“With high pressure and for days now”
Kühnert says what a general secretary just says before a party conference: He is looking forward to lively debates, the party can be proud of what it has achieved, and the vision for the future for the coming years will be decided upon.
One can understand that a general secretary wants to find words of encouragement at the party conference, but against the background of the ongoing government blockade it seems a bit distant. Kühnert brushes off what is probably the most important political question at the moment, namely the budget, like an annoying fly.
The federal government has been working “at full speed and for days” to reach a budget agreement for 2024, says Kühnert succinctly. “Our aim is to be able to meet up together before Christmas this year.” However, it is also clear that the SPD will not “make any bad compromises”.
“The SPD wants and will provide this orientation”
Kevin Kühnert thus indirectly confirms what Katja Mast previously texted her parliamentary group colleagues: There will be no proper adoption of the 2024 budget this year. The bar is now set somewhere else, lower: in reaching a political agreement between the three chief negotiators: Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP). The corresponding meetings of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, which must adopt the budget law, will not take place until 2024.
