The annual report of the Expert Council shows agreement on many issues among the four remaining members of the original quintet.
This is not surprising, because there is less disagreement among economists on individual issues than the general public thinks.
So it is not new, but in the context of the Berlin coalition negotiations, it is nevertheless very helpful when the Council reminds of the need for international cooperation in climate policy.
The committee did not find any consensus on its assessment of financial policy. The opinions of Veronika Grimm and Volker Wieland on the one hand and Monika Schnitzler and Achim Truger on the other hand, offered as alternative perspectives, reveal a fundamental difference in the understanding of a social market economy behind united invocations of a general need for financial policy rules.
Grimm and Wieland consider an expansionary financial policy to be sensible and necessary in times of crisis, but they call for a reduction in public debt in good economic times in order to keep public finances in order. Such a strategy is represented by those who do not consider a long-term support of a market economy by a very active state to be necessary even if digitization, education and climate policy require significant investments. Grimm and Wieland definitely see a need for public investments, but trust, supported by good framework conditions, that these projects will be largely financed by private investments. That is the way of the social market economy.
Schnitzler and Truger fear a relapse into stagnation and underfunding of important projects if the state does not get additional leeway.
Behind it stands the image of the knowing and guiding state, which guarantees the vital energy necessary for a structurally weak market economy.
Even if the future traffic light coalition helps to achieve a majority by appointing a fifth member of this position in the Council, it will remain factually incorrect.