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Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD): What else can the government spend money on in the coming year?
Photo: Tobias Schwarz / AFP
The top representatives of the traffic light coalition want to discuss the further course after the Karlsruhe budget ruling on Wednesday evening. To this end, leading politicians from the SPD, Greens and FDP have been invited to a meeting in the format of the coalition committee for 20:30 p.m., the news agency dpa and SPIEGEL were told from circles of the participants in Berlin. Formally, it was a long-planned date, which has now been confirmed against the background of the situation and the budget crisis.
The purpose of the meeting was to exchange views. However, it is clear that the difficult budget situation and the preparation of the 2024 budget will also be discussed, it added. There are considerable differences between the SPD and the Greens, in which the renewed declaration of an emergency is being considered in order to suspend the debt brake again. The FDP rejects this.
There is still open and fierce debate about what the government can still spend money on in the coming year. The Federal Constitutional Court had declared the reallocation of 60 billion euros in the 2021 budget null and void. The money had been approved as a Corona loan, but was to be used retrospectively for climate protection and the modernization of the economy. At the same time, the judges ruled that the state should not set aside emergency loans for later years. However, this is exactly what the federal government has done in special pots for the energy price brakes, among other things - which is now tearing additional holes in the budget.
til/cte/Reuters/dpa