Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) is expanding the federal government's planned new debt for the coming year to almost 100 billion euros - and is thus opposing the independent advisory board of the Stability Council, which is supposed to control the state's financial behavior.
In March the government assumed a net borrowing of 81.5 billion euros in the next year, now it expects 99.7 billion euros.
Christian Geinitz
Business correspondent in Berlin
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Manfred Schäfers
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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Because this is significantly more than the debt brake in the Basic Law allows, the black-red coalition wants to make use of the exception clause in the debt brake. According to this, the credit limit can be exceeded “in the event of natural disasters or exceptional emergency situations which are beyond the control of the state and which have a significant negative impact on the state's financial position”. In 2020 and 2021, this happened with reference to the pandemic. That was less undisputed than for 2022. After all, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday that 2023 would return to the debt brake.
According to Scholz's submission, the federal government should approve another move away from the normal budget ceiling this Wednesday.
However, the increased deficit is not only due to the corona pandemic.
An additional 7 billion euros are required for the health fund, 3 billion euros are earmarked for further corporate aid.
But the immediate climate protection program also has an impact.
An additional 4 billion euros should therefore flow into the Energy-Climate Fund.
On top of that, there is 1 billion each for everything: maintenance, defense, development cooperation and chip semiconductors.
Reserves are to be retained for the time being
The Stability Advisory Council sharply criticized the financial planning in its statement. "With regard to the debt brake, the Advisory Board cannot identify any exceptional emergency situation for the year 2022 in the present projections," says the report. "Due to the reserves that have been built up beforehand, compliance with the debt brake for 2022 would not require an abrupt consolidation that would jeopardize the upswing."
The coalition does not want to tap into the reserve created under the former Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) in 2022 in order to be able to more easily comply with the debt brake requirement in the Basic Law in the following years. "The effects of the corona pandemic on the federal budget as well as the burdens resulting from the supporting financial policy make it necessary again in the budget year 2022 to make use of the exception regulation for exceptional emergency situations according to Article 115, Paragraph 2, Clause 6 of the Basic Law," says the cabinet proposal , which the FAZ has. This means that the federal government's financial policy course coincides with the recommendations of the European Commission.
The Advisory Board does not see any need to extend the general exception clause of the European fiscal rules to the year 2022. He fears neither great pressure to save nor a threat to the upswing in the European Union. One can hardly blame the committee for calculating the corona costs in Germany unrealistically low: "For the period from 2020 to 2023, the total burden from the pandemic and other measures in the meantime is around 650 billion euros" , said its chairman Thiess Büttner of the FAZ
Olaf Scholz's house described the financial policy as successful on Monday, especially in the fight against pandemics. So you could keep the job market and the number of bankruptcies stable. The debt ratio is lower than after the financial crisis in 2010. Economic strength will soon return to the old level, but tax revenues will not be before 2027.