The corona pandemic and the Ukraine war have put a heavy strain on finances, and Finance Minister Lindner no longer wants to be so generous in 2023. Union and trade unions don’t leave a good hair on the budget plans.
The federal cabinet plans to launch the government draft for the 2023 federal budget on Friday. The debt brake suspended in the corona pandemic is to be observed again. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wants to comment on this in the afternoon in Berlin.
According to the draft, in order to be able to comply with the debt brake, the federal government should also use the billion-dollar reserve more than previously planned. The debt brake allows only a small amount of borrowing.
The Union faction accuses Lindner of a dubious budgetary policy. Christian Haase, budget spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, told the German Press Agency that compliance with the debt brake is only on paper.
«The household is not solid and more than sewn to the edge. It resembles Potemkin villages. The Federal Minister of Finance acts like a driver who drives into a smoke screen and hopes not to hit anything and get out again without an accident.” Union faction Vice Mathias Middelberg (CDU) told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” that the economic data on which the draft is based is already outdated.
Criticism of the draft budget also comes from the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). Board member Stefan Körzell spoke of a “austerity dictate”. Pointing out that there should be no further relief this year, Körzell told the dpa: “Finance Minister Lindner takes the wrong exit here several times.” The coalition partners in the traffic light would have to bring Lindner to reason, otherwise social peace would falter.
Körzell called the debt brake a “brake on the future”. Investments in the socio-ecological climate change are now necessary for the transformation to succeed. “Instead, Lindner is choking off investments, demand and thus the economy. This is how Germany will slide into the next crisis instead of coming out of the current one stronger. Spending cuts are completely the wrong way to combat high inflation, because the causes of inflation are not in government spending, but in specific supply bottlenecks.”
