After the Corona crisis, Germany needs more private and public investments - but not a policy that tries too hard to achieve balanced budgets.

This position is represented by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) in a current analysis of the CDU and CSU election manifestos.

Their plans to "unleash" the economy are to be welcomed in principle.

The Union's announcements on budget discipline go too far for the industry's umbrella organization.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

"Orienting the federal financial policy towards a balanced budget is not expedient from the BDI's point of view", so its analysis. “It would be fatal to let future investments fail because of a black zero.” The 56-page paper is available to the FAZ. In their program, the CDU and CSU are not only committed to the debt brake in the Basic Law, which allows the federal government to borrow within limits. They also announced: "We want to achieve balanced budgets as quickly as possible and reduce the general government debt ratio to below 60 percent."

The BDI objects: "In order to grow out of the crisis, we need an investment offensive that will last for years and a new planning law as a growth program up to 2030." It takes up a proposal from 2020 to set up a "Germany fund" to finance investments in the three-digit billion range .

The debt brake and the euro stability criteria - which are not available - make this possible.

A policy of the "black zero" stands in the way.

"There is no precise schedule"

Immediately after the launch of its election program, the Union was faced with allegations of unsound funding. Economists and the opposition had identified uncovered spending promises, especially in social policy. The CDU chairman Armin Laschet argues, however, that economic growth is the best recipe for increasing government revenues and balancing budgets.

The fact that the Union is committed to limiting social contributions to 40 percent of gross wages is clearly welcomed by the BDI.

He also rates their plans positively to cap taxes on corporate profits at 25 percent and to abolish “solos” for everyone.

Together with a few other tax breaks and plans to modernize the public administration, these points form an "unleashed package" with which the Union wants to get the economy going.

However, the leading industrial association is not entirely satisfied with the announced “unleashing”: “There is a lack of a precise schedule and clear priorities for the unleashing,” he criticizes and warns: “The Union must become more concrete and binding in order to respond appropriately to impatience to react in the economy. "