Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) has announced on the occasion of the budget debate for this year resolutions on reforms of the EU and the euro area. Opposition representatives accused him, however, to prevent ambitious innovations.

"They have taken the blockade attitude, and that does not do Europe well," said the Green Party politician Anja Hajduk during the debate with a view to Scholz 'hesitant attitude towards a digital tax. The Eurozone budget proposed by Scholz and his French colleague Bruno Le Maire was also "the lowest possible denominator". She finds Germany's role in the reform discussion "shameful."

The Franco-German concept met with a mixed response on Monday in the Eurogroup. However, Scholz emphasized that none of his European colleagues completely rejected it. "That's why it's a big step forward." A path is also being drawn for the minimum taxation of international corporations within the framework of the industrialized countries organization OECD. It looks like you can get a solution "by 2020," said Scholz.

Left-wing politician Fabio de Masi criticized the plans for minimum taxation as unrealistic. In the OECD there are "more tax havens than in the EU and the US block," he said. A digital tax at the European level is "the only language that Trump understands".

According to Scholz, there are risks for further growth in Europe, among other things due to the EU's exit from the United Kingdom. With regard to economic growth and tax revenues, there is an assessment that "this development is not quite as steady as it has been in recent years".

"Black Zero only through trickery"

The Bundestag started on Tuesday with the four-day final consultation on the budget 2019. It has a budget of 356.4 billion euros in the version of the Budget Committee for the coming year. A new debt should not exist again.

Representatives of AFD and FDP reproached Scholz, the so-called black zero is based on unsound calculations - among other things, because the so-called refugee reserve will be touched. The black zero was "only through trickery," said the chairman of the Budget Committee, Peter Boehringer (AFD).

The FDP budget politician Otto Fricke criticized, instead of saving Scholz costly proposals such as a guarantee of the pension level or a European unemployment insurance. "You are not a budget politician," said Fricke.