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Green parliamentary group vice-chairman Andreas Audretsch at the Green Party Congress: "It is very important that we now find a solution quickly"

Photo: IMAGO/dts News Agency

The forthcoming budget urgently needs to be discharged. The FDP wants to see "where the welfare state can make its contribution," said parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr recently. Now the deputy chairman of the Green Party in the Bundestag, Andreas Audretsch, is countering – and pushing for the abolition of the company car privilege.

"That would be a total of about 1.8 billion euros that would have to be saved at this point," Audretsch said in the "Frühstart" of RTL and n-tv. The tax relief would mainly benefit people with large cars, which would cause great environmental damage. "That doesn't make sense at this time."

Audretsch spoke out in favor of an agreement between the traffic light parties in the dispute over the 2024 budget before the end of this year. "It's very important that we find a solution quickly, because we realize that the whole of Germany is waiting for a solution." No matter where he looks – to the battery factory in the north, chip production in the east or the steelworkers in Saarland – results are rightly expected everywhere.

Emergency after emergency

Declaring an emergency for next year and further suspending the debt brake could be part of the solution, said the Green parliamentary group vice-chairman. The coalition must now clarify in the negotiations whether it can be done without this step.

The budget crisis is a result of a ruling from Karlsruhe: The Federal Constitutional Court had declared a reallocation of loans amounting to 60 billion euros in the 2021 federal budget null and void. They had been approved to cope with the corona crisis, but were to be used for climate protection and the modernisation of the economy. Parts of the SPD and the Greens are pushing for a suspension of the debt brake in order to get new money.

The coalition also disagrees on how to approach next year's budget. The SPD and the Greens are pleading for an emergency to be declared once again. This would allow the traffic light to incur more debt in 2024 than the 21.9 billion euros allowed by the debt brake. For the year 2024, there is currently a budget freeze for all projects that have not yet been legally committed by the government.

Mrc